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THE 






DESTINY 



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OUK COUl^TKY. 



r. Y 



CIIAKLES P. KIRKLAND. 



> NEW YORK: 

I PUBLISHED BY ANSON D. F. KANDOLPH, 

i 

j No. 770 B R A I) \V A Y. 

':?^o- ^ -^ 



10 



THE 



DESTINY 



or 



OUE COTJNTKY. 



BY 



CHARLES P. KIRKLAND. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY ANSON D. F. PvANDOLPII, 

No. 770 BROADWAY. 
1864. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

I WAS invited bj^ the " Association of Alumni " of Hamilton Col- 
lege, N. Y., to deliver an address at their annual meeting on the 20th 
of July, 1864. The following paper was prepared pursuant to that 
invitation. The portion relating to matters merely local and personal 
is now omitted. Much was omitted, for want of time, on the deliv- 
ery. Sonie notes are added. The address is published by request. 

CHARLES P. KIRKLAND. 

New York, July, 1864. 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 



In 1816, when, reckoning our national life from the time of the 
recognition by Great Britain of our Independence, we had existed 
as a people but thirty -three years, we had recently emerged from a 
three years' war with the most powerful nation on the" globe ; our 
commercial and other material interests had sufiered the natural 
consequences of war ; a national debt, large for that period, and 
certainly large for a nation of our then "tender years," had been in- 
curred ; that war had been conducted, not only against our exter 
nal foe, but against the opposition of an influential minority at home, 
yet not many years elapsed before we recovered from the calam- 
ities of that conflict ; our war debt was extinguished, and we started 
again on our former course of national prosperity, greatness and 
glory, with a future before us of more splendid promise than was 
ever before presented to any people. 

It would seem as if all lovers of that civil and religious liberty 
secured by our form of government, whether citizens of our own 
Republic, or dwellers under other and unfriendly systems, had the 
full assurance of the realization of their most ardent hopes and as- 
pirations, and that here was indeed erected a " Temple of Liberty," 
in which alL of any nationality, who desired to worship at her 
shrine, would for ever find welcome and protection ; and that that 
edifice, erected by our fathers, and thus far sacredly preserved by 
their successors, was destined to fall only when " the last trumpet 
should sound," and when should be heard the solemn and final fiat 
for the destruction of all things on earth. Occasionally, indeed, 
clouds were seen in the horizon, and mutterings as of a storm were 
heard in the distance ; but the former were dispelled and the latter 
silenced under the influence of the attachment of our people to 
their institutions, energized and vitalized, on one occasion espe- 
cially, by the strong-minded, the iron-willed and the ever-loyal 
Jackson, 

For more than seventy years after the adoption, of the Constitu- 



10 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

tion, no event occurred seriously threatening the peaceful progress 
of our country toward its destined place at the head, in respect of 
population and of national and moral power, of the nations of the 
world. So strong and so abiding had our faith become in tlie im- 
possibility of any serious attack on, or of any real danger to, the 
the ever-blessed Union of the States, that after all the threatening 
acts and declarations at Washington and elsewhere, prior to the 
Presidential election in 1860, watchful, and discriminating, and ex- 
perienced men entertained not the slightest imagination that the 
country was in peril, or that any overt, actual attempt would, or 
even could^ be made to subvert the Government. Not four weeks 
prior to that election, I was assured by a distinguished representa- 
tive of this State in the Senate of the United States, and who was 
then, and for many years had been, an influential and attentive 
member of that body, that the country need have no fears, for, that 
after the election, matters would subside into their usual quiet, and 
the last thing there was cause for apprehending was an actual at- 
tempt to dissolve 'the Union. A very few weeks after that elec- 
tion, another eminent Senator from our State emphatically declared, 
in a large public assemblage, that before the lapse of sixty days all 
vestiges of public opposition to the Government would disappear. 

In the views thus expressed by the persons to whom I allude, we 
see the confirmation of the remark just made, that the great body of 
our people had come to regard it as a practical impossibility that 
any portion of our own citizens would ever lay violent hands on 
our political structure with a serious view to its demolition. It 
seemed impossible and incredible, after the beneficent operation of 
our institutions and the brilliant career of our country for so many 
years, that any considerable number could be found within its 
bosom, willing and prepared to consign it to a speedy and an ever- 
lasting death. Yet this revolting spectacle has been witnessed, and 
the close of the year 1860 exhibited to our almost unbelieving eyes, 
and to astonished Europe, the deliberate inauguration of a series of 
measures, intended for the express and terrible purpose of the over- 
throw of the Government and the dissolution of the Union. The 
reality and depth and desperateness of that purpose have since 
been frightfully demonstrated. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter 
on the 12th of April, 1861, informed us, in language not to be mis- 
taken, that a civil war with all its horrors was ujion us; it fore- 
boded scenes of carnage and desolation and death not equalled in 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 11 

all previous history ; and all that was then imagined b}' the most 
vivid and appreliensive fancy has found its awful reality within tlie 
three years that have ehipsed since that never to be forgotten dny. 

Tlie contest then and thus commenced is yet pending ; it enlists, 
as well it may, the earnest and the anxious interest of all patriots 
here and of all lovers of civil liberty everywhere; all such look 
with unspeakable solicitude to the future. 

Under these solemn circumstances, I know of no theme more ap- 
propi-iate for the consideration of American citizens than "The 
Destiny of our Country." 

The consideration of this subject of necessity involves an inquiry 
into the causes of the present rebellion, its true nature and character, 
and its intended, and, if successful, its inevitable effects ; whether 
it can be successful, and if not, the position in which the several 
States, those in rebellion and those not in rebellion, will be at the 
time of its overthrow, the mode in which the States in rebellion will 
resume their former ]X)sition in the Union ; and then, the future 
of our country. In such an inquiry it is obvious that every thought 
and every feeling of what may be denominated "^<2r«!y," in its 
technical and restricted sense must be absolutely banished; "abo- 
litionists," "republicans," "democrats," as representing party 
ideas and party organizations, must all and equally be ignored. 



I. 

The first overt act of treason and rebellion was in December, 
1860, when at Columbia, in South Carolina, one hundred and sixty- 
nine citizens of that State assembled, called themselves a Conven- 
tion of the people of the State, adjourned to Charleston, and there, 
on the 21st day of that month, adopted an " ordinance" (as they 
termed it) of secession from the Union. This example was almost 
immediately tollovved in the remaining rebel States, and in such a 
manner as conclusively to show that this act in that State was the 
premeditated act of the leading spirits of the rebellion throughout 
those States,* and was, to all practical purposes, its commencement — 

* It is a significant fact, that the Governors at that time (1SG0-'61) of five of the rebel 
States were natives of .South Carolina — had been "brought up at the feet" of her " GaTua- 
liel," and were deeply imbued with those fatal political heresies which contributed so much 
to bring upon our country her present dire calamities. 



12 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

its birth. It is vitally important in this branch of the inquiry to 
advert to the then condition of our country in general, and of the 
rebel States in particular. The general condition of the Republic, 
as has already been stated, was a condition of unexampled ])ros- 
perit)' ; we had then existed as an independent people, dating from 
the Declaration of Independence, eighty-four years, and from the 
adoption of the Constitution, seventy-one years, and neither ancient 
nor modern times furnish any example of so wonderful a national 
advance, in so brief a period, in glory, honor, and 'material and 
moral power. Onr prosperity excited the admiration of all who 
loved, and the ill-will and envy of all who hated, free institutions. 
The nu:»st sanguine and enthusiastic of the men of the Revolution 
and of the Convention of 1787, never anticij)ated from their labors 
such magnificent results in so short a time. In all this glory, honor, 
pi'osperity and power, the people of the rebel States were full and 
welcome participants. The sun never shone on political com- 
munities in the more perfect enjoyment of civil and religious 
liberty; of social, personal, and domestic security; of entire pro- 
tection in the possession and use of all their property of every 
kind ; and of more material prosperity and of more exalted national 
glory and prestige than were the people of the ten rebel States on 
the 1st day ot December, 1860. 

Those States, too, up to that day had been the favored and the 
petted sisters of the family ; with less than one-third of the popu- 
lation, wealth and business resources of the Republic, they had, up 
to that time, been the recipients of nearly two-thirds of its highest and 
vahiable offices, as wall be seen by an examination of the list of our 
Presidents and Vice-Presidents, Cabinet and Foreign Ministers, and 
Army and Navy officers. Tliey had had, in profuse liberality, and 
wholly in disproportion to their contributions to the public 
treasury, appropriations for forts, harbors, custom houses, jDOst 
offices, internal navigation, mail facilities and many other public 
objects. They had never failed to have a preponderating power in 
the national Congress ; and at the election of President Lincoln, 
and at the very moment of the rebellion, the Senate and House of 
Representatives contained a majority politically opposed to him 
and sympathizing, in all that was possiUe under the Co7istitution, 
with the South. 

Up to the period in question (December 1, 1860), the most 
painstaking and hypercritical scrutiny will fail to discover a solitary 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 13 

act, on the part of the Government of the United States, of hostil- 
ity, or even of nnkindness or discourtesy, toward tliose States or 
their people. On the contrary, authentic history shows that the 
national Government had uniformly exhibited to those States, their 
people and their institutions, marked kindness, indulgence, and, it 
may almost be said, partiality. No intelligent, candid, foreign ob- 
server could fail to perceive that, as between the North and the 
South, the latter had been from the start the marked favorite of 
the General Government. Unquestionably, for many years individ- 
uals at the North, technically known as " Abolitionists^''''* had orally 
and in print uttered senti-ments adverse alike to the " peculiar insti- 
tution" of the South and to the Constitution of their country; but 
it is equally unquestionable that those individuals were few in num- 
ber, insignificant in influence and absurdly fanatical in character. 
The paucity of their numbers and their utter destitution of influence 
were conclusively demonstrated at the New York election in Novem- 
ber, 18G0, when their candidate for Governor, out of the 700,000 elec- 
tors of the State, received but 5,000 votes, about one in one hun- 
dred and fifty of the voting population.. It is true, too, that dur- 
ing the same period, the Legislatures of two or three of the North- 
ern States had j)assed acts intended to obstruct the operation of the 
" Fugitive Slave" law ; but those acts, under the influence of the 
popular feeling at the North, were repealed before the inaugura- 
tion of the rebellion, and had they not been, they would have been 
adjudged void by the supreme judicial tribunal of the Union as 
in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States. These 
exyn-essions of individual sentiment, as above stated, can never be 
restrained in a country where liberty of speech and of the press 
are of the very birthright of the citizen ; and it is in pl^ce here 
to say, that in view of the fatal dangers wdiicli, for the last 
thirty years, have attended the promulgation of such sentiments 
in any Southern State, they have had no utterance there. It 
may be said, without fear of contradiction, that during the whole 
time of the existence on the statute book of the State laws just men- 
tioned, they were practically inoperative^ and that not a single fu- 
gitive escaped a return to his master by means of their provisions. 
No unprejudiced and reasonably well-informed man, whether a 
dweller in the Northern or in the Southern States, or in a foreign 
country, can in his heart believe that the sayings or the doings of 

* What I mean by this term is stated in a subsequent note. 



14 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

^ Abolitionists," or the State laws above mentioned, have ever, to 
any perceptible degree, affected the safety, the domestic tranquil- 
lity or the pecuniary interests of the citizens of any Southern State. 
Certainly, no sane man will assert that the slightest danger or detri- 
ment in any manner has thereby arisen to any State south of the 
border slave States ; and yet the latter, which are the only States 
practically exposed to any trouble or injury from the causes 1 have 
mentioned, have not (with the exception of Eastern Virginia,) uni- 
ted in the rebellion. 

It is unnecessary to dwell on these matters; my purpose in this 
branch of the subject is to present in a clear and vivid light, such 
as the trutli justifies and requires, the great and undeniable fact, 
tliat up to the time of the breaking out of the rebellion the history 
of our Government presents not a solitary act of aggression on the 
rights, the material interests, the domestic security and tranquility 
of the people of any rebel State, or of any portion thereof. In an in- 
quiry as. to the motives and causes of the rebellion and its nature and 
character, it is not possible to overestimate or to overstate the impor- 
tance of the truth, in the first place as to the actual condition of 
those States in reference to all that constitutes the happiness, the 
security, the prosperity of a community, at the time of their first 
overt act in the scheme for the overthrow of the Government of their 
country ; and, in the second place, as to the treatment they liad in- 
variably received from that Government from the first hour of its 
existence up to that momentous day. It is, indeed, impossible for 
any one to arrive at just conclusions as to the merits of the tremen- 
dous conflict now existing without a knowledge and appreciation 
of the truth as to the two matters just mentioned ; and when the 
honest inquirer, whether he belongs to one party, or another, or to 
no part}', shall have made the inquiry and investigation necessary 
to convince him what that truth is, he will inevitably arrive at the re- 
sult I have stated and at that result only. It is the result neces- 
sarily produced by the irrefragable testimony of admitted fact and 
of undisputed history. Before the conclusion of this paper, I shall 
have occasion to advert to the errors in argument and the delusions 
in opinion, as well as to the serious practical injury, which have 
arisen from the want of a clear understanding and a suitable ap- 
preciation of the truth I have stated. 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRT. 15 



II. 



Such, then, having been the happy condition of those States at 
the inauguration of the rebellion and such having been the uni- 
form paternal conduct of their Government toward them, I state 
another proposition which is self-evident, viz.: That for those bless- 
ings, as beneticent and as bounteous as were ever showered by the 
Almighty on any people, those States and their people were in- 
debted .to that Constitution and that Union for the overthrow of 
which the rebellion was commenced and is continued. 

It is well known that the " Confederation " which was superseded 
by the Constitution of " '89 " was a feeble and inefficient political 
structure, powerless alike for the purposes of internaljgovernment and 
of external relations. We did not become, for any available and 
permanent purpose, a tuition till the adoption of the Constitution ; 
all prior to that was incipient, imperfect and preparatory; by that 
wonderful work of genius, of wisdom and of foresight, we took our 
place among the nations of the earth ; we became in a political and 
governmental sense the "Amei'ican People." The people of those 
States became an integral part of that nation ; they became the 
participators in its glory and power; they became entitled to the 
proud name of "American Citizen," and to the protection every- 
where of the flag of their country ; they lived, and prospered, and 
flourished solely under and by means of the Constitution and laws of 
that country; and, while in many and important particulars they 
were also citizens of States, in all that related to nationality they were 
citizens of "The United States of America." Their country was not 
their "State," it was "The United States; their nation was not the 
nation of South Carolina, of Georgia, of Texas, it was the "American 
Nation ;" and by that title only they and we alike were known and 
recognized by the world. 

This truth, like the other, must be kept continually in mind and 
must be solemnly pondered by all who investigate this great sub- 
ject in the spirit of candor, integrity and patriotism, and with the 
honest desire to form a just judgment on a matter so momentous in 
all its aspects. 

Under the facts above stated, the truth of which can never be 
disputed, it is absolutely impossible that the rebellion can for a 
moment be justified, or that it can in reality have had its origin on 
the ground that the Government of the country, either in its theo- 



16 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

retical principles or the fundamental rules prescribed for its con- 
duct or in its practical administration, has not fully answered its 
^reat and beneficent purpose of securing to the people of those 
States, in common with the ])eople of the remainder of the Union, 
all the blessings of every kind ever intended to be se<cured, or ever 
in fact secured, by any government yet adopted by, or devised for 
man individually or as a member of a commonwealth. 



in. 

"What, then, were the real causes, the actual originating motives, 
of this scheme for the overthrow of such a government and the 
destruction of such a nation ? It is not difficult to ascertain nor so 
to state them as to render them clear to all earnest seekers after 
truth. The scheme is not of recent origin ; it dates at least as far 
back as the first term of the administration of President Jackson, 
and its first open manifestation was in the attempt at nullification 
then made by a portion of the people of South Carolina. It was at 
that period, and before, evident to a few aspiring, ambitious men 
of that and others of tlie States uow in rebellion, that by the 
more rapid progress of the States of the North in population, 
material strength and every thing pertaining to national prosperity 
and advancement, the time was not very tar distant when the pre- 
ponderating influence in the national Government and councils, 
which had therefore been claimed by and conceded to those men and 
their brethren and sympathizers, must in the ordinary and inevitable 
course of events cease to exist or be very greatly diminished. It was 
equally evident to those men that the operation of the democratic 
principle of our Government would gradually sap and ultimately 
undermine the foundations of the aristocracy to which they be- 
longed, and which, to every essential purpose, entirely controlled 
the population within their borders. We have only to look at the 
facts of the census to convince us of this truth. Those States con- 
tain, (in round numbers,) four hundred thousand slaveholders, four 
and one half millions of non-slaveholders, (the vast majority of 
whom are what is denominated there " poor whites," or " white 
trash,") and three and a half millions of slaves. These numbers 
are not precisely accurate, but sufficiently so for all practical pur- 
poses. It is an undoubted historical fact, which no candid man 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 17 

will deny, that the political power and the social pre-eminence of 
that whole country were possessed by the slaveholders. It required 
no prophetic eye to foresee or to foretell, that the introduction there 
of the ideas of the political equality of all white men, and the dig- 
aity of labor, and of the truth of the sentiment in this regard an- 
nounced in the "Declaration of independence," would, if accom- 
2:)anied by education and consequent intelligence, gradually weaken 
and ultimately and at no very remote period, destroy, the aris- 
tocracy which naturally was so dear to them. They could not but 
see and realize that, between the millions of the subordinate white, 
race among them and the millions of men at the North, who in 
different modes "earned their bread by the sweat of their brow," 
there must of necessity arise in time a strong bond of sympathy ; 
and that, whenever the real state of things came to be understood 
and appreciated by that class of their people, they would assert 
their manhood, and claim the same position politically and soci- 
ally enjoyed by men of the same class in other sections of the 
Union. 

There is the highest authority for saying, that the leading and 
influential men of the rebel Aristocracy dreaded the introduction 
of the " democratic " principle among their people. One of them, in 
1851, then holding an important office at the seat of the Government 
of the nation, declared that "democracy is incompatible with the 
whole S3^stem of Southern society." Another, in 1855, in speaking 
of the democratic theory of Government by a majority, says, " it is 
more powerful and more grinding in its tyranny than the Czar," 
" more infallible than the Pope," and "that in England the ability 
to govern has been preserved by a highly aristocratic constitution, 
both social and jpoliticalP Another, in 1861, declares that the 
"Union has served its purposes; at the North the progress and 
tendency of opinion is to democracy ; the South must so modify 
its institutions as to remove the people farther from the direct ex- 
ercise of power; at the South men see the necessity of stronger 
government, its people are the most aristocratic in the world, and 
aristocracy is the only safeguard of liberty." Another eminent 
Southern writer, in the same year, says, " those pestilent and per- 
nicious dogmas, ' the greatest good to the greatest number,' ' the 
nuijority shall rule,' are the fruitful source of disorders never to be 
quieted, revolutions the most radical and sanguinary, philosophies 
the most false, and passions the most wild and destructive. The 
2 



18 ■ THE DESTINY OP OUK COUNTRY. 

experiment of tlie democratic Re{)ublic of America lias fjiiled." The 
person now holding the second otKce in the rebel government, in 
giving in his adhesion at the connnencement of the rebellion, de- 
clared as his I'cason for the stej) " the indispensable necessity of 
founding ix, new government based on \.\\q social system of the Souths 
Another of their leading men argued that "the Government should 
be taken from the ' heels of society ' (meaning the many) and ' placed 
in the head' (meaning the favored few)." From the year 1830 to 
the inauguration of the rebellion, in public addresses, private let- 
ters, leading newspapers and favorite literary periodicals in those 
States, similar sentiments are found in such abundance that there 
can.be no doubt of the prevailing, and it may be said, the uniform 
feeling and opinion in this particular of the "governing" class there. 
We thus have the two great operative causes and influencing mo- 
tives of that "class," and more especially of its ambitious and as- 
piring members, wdiich impelled them to undertake the destruction 
of the Union, viz., personal ambition and hatred of democracy. 1 
have no hesitation in deliberately declaring these to have been the 
causes and the motives. The case and the truth cannot be better 
stated than in the New Yorh World of October 4, 1862 : 

" The Northern people have accepted this war on too narrow grounds alto- 
getlier. They have comprehended but a very meagre portion of the real inter- 
est at stake — for the very good reason that they have hardly begun to understand 
the spirit and aims of the rebel leaders. Had there been a better appreciation 
of the actual truth, the war would never have lagged as it has been sufiercd to 
do from the beginning. 

" The evidence of such men as Col. Hamilton, who is fresh from the active 
scenes of the rebellion, and who has watched it with penetrating eye from its 
first step, is of peculiar value. Their conclusions, formed on the spot, face to 
face with the monster, are of infinitely more weight than the notions of North- 
ern men, who know it only by occasional glimpses in the far distance. It is 
well that their testimony should be brought before our public whenever it can 
be obtained. The gentlemen who have induced Col. Hamilton to address our 
people with instruction and appeal, have done the good cause precious service. 
.... Col. Hamilton has no hesitation in pronouncing the issue now pending 

to be THE VERY HIGHEST, AND BROADEST, AND DEEPEST possible. It is, to llis 

mind, nothing more nor less than a struggle between the ultimate princi- 
ples OF CIVIL government — a question whether tlie rule of the few or the rule 
of the mnny s\v<\\\ prevail. He presents it as his settled conviction that the lead- 
ers in this rebellion are actuated by a distinct purjiose to SUPPLANT POPU- 
LAR GOVEItNMENT and ESTABLISH A MONARCHY, and that this comea 
from their belief that slavery can haoe no effentwil safeguard except ichat the 
strongest form of government can afford. Therefore, he warns us not to rest upon 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 19 

the idea that mere territory, or even mere nationality, is at stake in this conflict. 
What has really got to be decided, as he justly views it, is, not whether the 
flag itself shall be deprived of a tiiird of its stars, or whether the flag itself shall 
continue to exist, but whether the Bepublicnn j)rinciple^ ■which has given the flag 
all its glory, is oi' is not to perish. He rightly declares that the co-existence of 
a Monarchy and a Republic between the Great Lakes and the Gulf, is a civil 
inipossil)ility — that such an experiment would only he another name /or 2>6''- 
petiial war. 

" We are, therefore, shut up to the absolute necessity of meeting this question 
now, once for all, and in fidelity to the great principles of the Declaration of 
Independence, which our forefathers sealed with their blood, are bound to 
prosecute this war with an energy and a self-devotion far beyond any thing we 
have yet displayed. These are great facts which Col. Hamilton seeks to en- 
force. He talks like a man who is thoroughly joervaded by a sense of their 
awful moment — and no mind that heeds his disclosures and his arguments, can 
doubt that he is right." 

That tlie aspiring, determined and sleeplessly vigilant lead- 
ers of that "class" actually had the influence I have ascribed 
to them in inaugurating the rebellion, is demonstraced by the 
whole history of its commencement and progress, and is fully 
attested by the evidence of hundreds of the intelligent and en- 
lightened Southern friends of the Union, among whom I may name 
Governor Hamilton of Texas, Lorenzo Sherwood, now of New York, 
but for fourteen years immediately preceding I860, a resident of 
Galveston, Texas, and a distinguished lawyer and Democratic poli- 
tician ; the elo(pient Colonel Anderson, by bii'th a Kentuckian and 
by residence a Texan ; Andrew Johnson* and Judge Catron of 
Tennessee, John Minor Botts of Virginia, General Gantt of Arkan- 
sas, the lamented Pettia;i-ew of South Carolina, Judge Wayne of 
Georgia, Governor Boorman of Western Virginia, the eminent and 
pious Dr. Breckinridge of Kentuckj', Governor Pierpont of Eastern 
Virginia ; distinguished men in Missouri too numerous to mention, 
many of whose names are familiar to us all ; Clemens of Alabama, 
Bouligny of Louisiana, Blair of the District of Columbia, Davis of 
Maryland.f These persons, with one or two exceptions, were 

* This gentleman, in a public address at Nashville on the 10th of June last, said: " This 
aristocracy has been the bane of the rebel States. One of the chief elements of the rebeilioa 
is the 0]iposition of the slave aristocracy to being ruled by men who have risen from the 
ranks of the people. One of them, holding an important official position, said to me, ' We 
the people of the South will not consent to be governed by a man who has risen from the 
ranks of the common people.' This man uttered the essential spirit and feeling of the 
Southern rebellion." 

t The Englishman Russell, the well known correspondent of the London Times, and who 
had no sympathy with the cause of the Union, visited South Carolina a few months after 



20 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

natives of the Soutli and slaveliolders. The proofs on this point 
mig'ht be indefinitely uiultiphed. That those "leaders" could have 
had die influence ascribed to then), though a small minority of the 
voting population of those States, can easily be believed when we 
look at the social state of things, the prevalence of the fatal political 
heresy of " the right of secession," the prejudice against the North, 
the pervading ignorance, and the relentless despotism in reference 
to the liberty of speech and of the press in one particular, existing 
among that people in 1860 and for at least the whole preceding 
part of the present century. 

The people of the States in which slavery is unknown, have but 
an inadequate idea of the aristocracy produced by that institution 
as it exists in the rebel States, and of the insidious but effective 
manner in which it subordinates the "many" to the "few." A 
brief residence there or a tour through those States would satisfy 
the most sceptical that the "governing" class, socially and politi- 
cally, and for every practical purpose, is this aristocratic class, which, 
by long usage and common consent, occupies the position of conceded 
supremacy. Among this class there is again a natural division ; on 
the one side, those who by education, ambition, taste, family pres- 
tige, or otherwise are the "leaders" of their " class ;" on the otiier, 
the portion by far the most numerous, who pursue the " even tenor 
of their way," superintending their plantations and their slaves, 
seldom or never going beyond the bounds of their own States or 
(in many instances) even of their own immediate districts, having, 
as a general rule, but limited education and but little knowledge of 
the world or its doings outside of their own boundaries. I know 
that many will hardly credit this statement, but its truth will be 
testified to by any candid, intelligent and observing man wdio has 
had the opportunity of seeing the interior of that portion of the 
Union. On this point I refer with entire confidence to the volumes 
of Fredei'ick Law Olmstead,* late General Secretary of the United 
States Sanitary Commission, the accuracy of whose statements in 
many particulars is known to me by personal observation. Thus, 
the very large bulk of the slaveholding population furnished an in- 
viting fleld for the operations of those who placed themselves at the 

tlieir ordinance of secession, and was admitted to the confidence and social intimacy of her 
leading men. He states expressly in his published letters in the*Lond()n 7'un-cs, that those 
men often expressed to him their preference for a monarchical government and for aristo- 
cratic institutions, and made no disguise of their sentiments in this particular. 

* " Seaboard Slave States," " Texas Journey," " A Journey in the Back Country." 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 21 

head of the movement of rebellion. Then, as to the non-slavehold- 
ing class, no one can deny tha'', with the exception of a compara- 
tively small number eno;aged in mercantile and the liigher branches 
of mechanical and manufacturing pursuits, that class is of a very 
low order, denominated in some ot those States " crackers," and in 
all of them " white trash." This class, with the exceptions above 
mentioned, was for all practical purposes, so far as related to politi- 
cal matters, especiallj' those concerning the peculiar social system 
of the rebel States, under the lead and control of the same "few" 
who led and guided the great proportion of their own slaveholding 
class. To this must be added the undeniable fact of the general 
Avant of education among the people of both classes, a want produc- 
ing in the vast majority of them gross ignorance, and in a large 
proportion of even slaveowners themselves a degree of ignorance 
unknown among the bulk of the population of the "free" States of 
the Union. Then again the dogma of the " right of secession," and 
of the consequent supreme allegiance due to a State had been 
sedulously inculcated by their leading politicians and statesmen, 
almost from the organization of the National Government, cer- 
tainly from the beginning of the present century, so that it had be- 
come the creed of nearly all the people who had intelligence enough 
to form any opinion. It was a subtle poison, imbibed as it were, in 
early infancy, by a great majority of the present generation there. 
We see its practical fruits in the otherwise unaccountable desertion 
of their country's flag and violation of their solemn, repeated oaths 
by officers of the Army and Nav}"-, and a similar violation by 
numerous incumbents of the highest civil stations ; and those very 
men, almost without exception, indebted solely to that country, 
"The United States of America," for all that distinguished them 
from the common mass of their fellow-citizens. So virulent was 
that poison, thus early imbibed, and so thoroughly permeating 
the whole head and heart of the individual man, that in many 
instances within the last four years, it has been seen to operate 
in those, who in early youth left their Southern birthplace, and 
had spent the last twenty or thirty ^^ears in happiness and pros- 
I^erity and honor among their brethren of the North. Yet they 
" owed their allegiance to the State of their birth," and have 
ACTKD Accordingly. Then, again, a bitter prejudice against the 
North has been unceasingly instilled into the minds of the whole 



22 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

population for a long series of years by ambitious and unscrupulous* 
men, so that in tlieir condition of ignorance and seclusion, multi- 
tudes of them had come to believe us tlieir natural enemies. 

It is also to be remembered that, so far as their social system and 
every matter connected with it, nearly or remotely wei'e concerned, 
there has literally been for more than half a century no liberty of 
speech or of the press within the rebel States. In no part of the globe 
lias there existed in this respect a more relentless tyranny. The 
natural results followed ; ill-will, prejudice, credulity, susceptibility of 
false impressions, blind infatuation. It is a well known fact, also, 
that the scheme of rebellion had been plotted by the leading con- 
spirators long before its actual outbreak; and that, preceding that 
period, those conspirators and their associates had possessed them- 
selves of, or placed it in their power to possess, to a great extent, 
the military material as well of the United States as of their several 
States. Accordingly, though at the very beginning of the attempt 
to force their States into actual separation from the Union, there 
was in many of them a majority of votes against it, yet in the state 
of things already shown to exist, and with the aid of the arms 
and munitions of war they had taken care to provide them- 
selves with, it was no difficult task for the conspirators between 
the 21st of December, 1860, and the 1st of May, 1861, to bring 
about the results, which struck the nation and the world M'ith 
amazement and horror.f Tiie conspirators did their work entirely 

* I mako tVie following extract from an authentic st;itement recently published as to the 
condition of things in Texas. The description is precisely applicable to every rebel State : 
" Perhaps there was never a people more bewitched, beguiled and befooled, than we were 
when we drifted into this rebellion. We have been kept so to an amazing extent. Our 
editors, our preachers and stump-speakers, inflamed the people with falsehoods of rights 
violated, constitutions broken, laws disregarded, on the one hand, and easy victories on the 
other; and it is astonishing how easily the pretended secession was made and the war 
began. True, the people's ignorance made it an easy matter; but that does not excuse the 
persevering misrepresentations. Statements like this (by one since an officer of high rank) 
were common : ' I will give a good bond to drink all the blood shed in a war caused oy 
secession.' " 

+ Mr. James Brooks, now Member of Congress from New York, traveled extensively in the 
rebel States some years since, and published an account of his observations and experiences. 
In relating a conversation he had in South Carolina with one of the non-slaveholding class, 
"who could read and was intelligent beyond his fellows, he says: "This conversation gave 
us a good idea of the feelings which have wrought up the mass of the people in South 
Carolina to such an exasperation. This man is by no means a specimen of the intelligent 
nullifiei-s, but he is a good specimen of the backwoodsmen who were to do the fightinrj. 
The high-mettled fellow had been first taught to ' damn the Yankees;' next, to cultivate an 
undue State pride; then to believe his State was omnipotent, and her continuance in the 
Union all important, and indispensably necessary to support the Government-, He solemnly 
believed, and would have taken his oath, that South Carolina paid all the taxes of this vast 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 23 

tlirouo'h conventions I in no State was a majority of tlio votes of the 
/people ever given for separation.* I have advei'ted thus briefly tO 
these matters, for the purpose of presenting a conchisive answer to 
the wicked and mischievous falhicy which has occasionally been 
put forth among us, that the rebellion was the deliberate, well-con- 
eidered, solemn, voluntary, earnest act of the iKople of the rebel 
States, and not induced by the machinations or the wiles of am- 
bitious and unprincipled leaders, determined on the overthrow of 
democratic republican institutions and the substitution of a govern- 
mental system, under which the laboring classes, hlach and white, 
would be alike and for ever subordinate. Had the rebellion been 
in truth, as has been so falsely alleged, the deliberate act of tbat 
people, it would doubtless have been entitled from us and from the 
world to more respect and more lenient consideration ; but even in 
that case, it would have resulted from motives and causes so wholly 
erroneous, delusive, and unfounded, and its practical consequences, 
if successful, would have been equally so ruinous and fatal to the 
country, that our imperative duty would then have been, as it is 
now, at all hazards to defeat and overthrow it, and thus to save our 
nationality. In thus affirming the general condition of the people 

Union. At a hundred million of dollars he set down her burthen ! A foreign nation was 
about to .subdue him and his State, and his pride rose on the reflection, and he was ready to 
Ihiow his life away in attacking a fortified castle on an open raft! Mr. CaUionrCs iveU-instruoted 
lackwoadsmerv of whom he boasted in Congress, are as ignorant of the extent, power and com- 
plicated interests of this Governmeiit as are the Reeky Afountain Indians." He fully confirms 
all I have said as to the non-slaveholding class. He also equally confirms all my statements 
as to the ignorance, delusion and prejudice of that class of slaveholders, to whom I attribute 
those qualities. If he would now republish what he then wrote, all which was then true 
and is now true, he would render a valuable service to his couutr3'men. 

* Two works recently published, " Loyalty on the Border, etc," by Col. Baker, 1st Ark. 
Cavalry, and "Scenes in the War in Arkansas, etc.," by Wm." Baxter, perfectly illustrate 
the mode in which every rebel State, with two or three exceptions, was led into the 
rebellion. These writers tell us: "In the first convention which met in Arkansas the 
secession ordinance brought up by the conspirators was voted down by a majority of over 
two-thirds. This ought to have been conclusive. The excitement had been great; the 
people's minds had been inflamed by artful misrepresentations; every effort had been made 
to get a majority to vote for secession, and finally, to persuade the more pliable Unionists 
not to vote, and thus let the conspirators carry their measure. But every effort failed; and 
with this decision, if they had meant honorably to submit to the will of the people, they 
would have rested. Did they? Not at all. They demanded an ordinance referring the 
question to the people— who had just decided by their vote in convention — and then led the 
Unionists into consenting to an adjournment subject to the call of the president, with the 
promise that he should not call the convention together till after the people had voted in 
August. But the president of the convention, who had procured his election on the j^retense 
of being a Union man, was one of the conspirators : he called the body to meet on the 'Jth 
of May. Sumter had just fallen, and the country was in a blaze of excitement; this was a 
good opportunity for the traitors. They collected an excited crowd in the hall where the 



24. THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

of the rebel States in reference to education, intelligence, and pre- 
judice, it is by no means asserted that there were not many of 
whom that condition could not be predicated. Nor is it to be as- 
serted, that there were not and are not among that people some, 
wliose devotion to their country has continued an operative prin- 
ciple in the midst of the dangers and difficulties that environed 

convention met, and no sooner had the roll been read than a member arose, presented an 
ordinance of secession, and moved that the veas and nays be taken on it without debate. 
Under the manii)ulation of the traitor Walker, the presiding officer, this was done. Every 
' aye' was received with a thundering shout from the infuriated crowd ; the ' nays' were 
given in silence. Then Walker arose, and amidst jeers and threats against Union men, 
urged the ' noes' to recant, and, frightened and discouraged, all did so bufone. His name 
was Murphy ; he was compelled to fly from the State; he is now its loyal Governor. Thus 
by a series of frauds the conspirators attained their end. First by the help of the Knights 
of the Golden Circle a legislature was elected, which called a State convention. That con- 
vention, chosen hurriedly, without giving the people time for consideration, in the midst 
of wild excitement, yet refused to do the bidding of those who had procured its call. Re- 
belling against its decision, which they had engaged to hold final, they now demanded the 
submission of a secession ordinance directly to the people. The Unionists, conscious of 
their strength, consented to this also, and were cheated into adjourning the convention 
until the popular vote should be taken. Then once more the conspirators broke the agree- 
ment, and refused to wait for the verdict of the people which they had themselves demanded. 
They called the convention and pushed through their measures by violence. That is the 
way a coup d'etat is effected in a Republic. But, the reader will say, if the Uiiion men were 
in a majority, why did they submit? They submitted, because their enemies at once began 
to murder, imprison, rob, and exile them ; because the secessionists had arms in their 
hands, and pursued, with bitter cruelty, every Union man who dared utter his senti- 
ments ; because ' seventy-seven loyal men were chained together, two and two, with an 
ordinary log chain fastened to the neck of each,' and thus marched for six days through 
the country to l^ittle Rock, where they were offered the alternative of ' volunteermg' into 
the rebel army, or being starved in prison ; because — so popular was the rebel service even 
in the beginning — one General offered for the capture of a Union man, Wilhite, ' living or 
dead,' ' seven thousand dollars and three honorable discharges from the Confederate service.' 
The Governor of the State was one of the leading conspirators; the president of the con- 
vention, as we have seen, was also in their councils at the time when he was elected by 
UnioQ votes; the arsenal was in their hands; and no sooner was the ordinance of secession 
passed than Texas and Louisiana troops were sent into Arkansas to maintain the power of 
the secessionists, while the Arkansas regiments, as fast as raised, were sent across the 
Mississippi. That is the way Arkansas was made unanimous. Moreover, to be silent in 
those days was held a crime. Loyal men dared not speak their sentiments, nor dared they 
keep their mouths shut. Everywhere troops of other Statesvvere encouraged to perpetrate 
the most brutal outrages upon those who were suspected of loyalty. The mails were 
stopped, false news of Union defeats was industiiously circulated. Washington was cap- 
tured at least once every ten days, and the Union army routed continually. Fort Dunelson 
was asserted to have been a glorious victory for the rebels, with thousands of prisoners; 
and while the weak minded were thus affected, the lives and property of those who still 
obstinately remained faithful were given over to the lawless Texans and Louisianians, who 
actually sacked Fayetteville, where they were quartered, and which is a part of the State 
which had declared almost unanimously for the Union. Elder Graham, a noble Kentuckian, 
who had removed to Arkansas to found the Arkansas College, whose life was devoted to 
the spread of education in the Southwest, waa a Union man, and was forced to fly from the 
State— or be murdered. This is the nature of the 'great popular upiising in the South.' '" 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 25 

them. That faithful "band will never be forgotten by a grateful 
country. These Unionists of the South and the rebels, the liberal- 
ists and the aristocrats of Europe, all agree in the character of the 
issue now on trial before the world. They all know and assent, 
that this war is, in fact, a struggle of the slave aristocracy of 
Atnei-ica, aided, encouraged, and sympathized in by the aristoc- 
racy of Europe on the one side, against democratic institutions on 
the other ; or, as it has been tersely called by an able writer, 
" Slavery and Nobility vs. Democracy." Almost the entire body 
of the English nobility openly, and many of them actively, favor 
the rebellion; they know and they feel that its originators com- 
prise in this country a distinct class, a class as clearly separated 
from the great body of the people in the rebel States as they them- 
selves are from the masses in England. This, on the ordinary 
principles of human nature, and from the ineradicable feeling of 
" caste," leads to a cordial personal sympathy on their part with 
their " brethren" here. But, besides, and more emphatically, the 
aristocratic classes of Great Britain and of all Europe are sensitively 
alive to the fact, stated a few months since in the London Review^ 
" that any one who knows what lies beneath the surface of 
European society, must be aware that the spirit of republican 
liberty is a snake that has been scotched, not killed." Those 
classes, in their moments of calm reflection, cannot but be tremu- 
lously apprehensive of the silent but continued " working" of the 
*' leaven" of the French and American Revolutions. They cannot 
shut their eyes to the progress of liberal principles in England and 
on the Continent ; they know that our great American Republic has 
ever had the enthusiastic admiration of multitudes of poets, orators, 
statesmen, and heroes in every country, and that it has at this mo-' 
ment vast numbers of earnest friends in all parts of Europe, espe- 
cially in Great Britain ; they know its absolute antagonism to their 
system, and that it is a living, glaring rebuke of those sj'stems. 
Knowing all this, they know and feel that the overthrow of this 
Republic, arising as it did, under the most propitious circumstances, 
and successful as it has thus far been in its career, would be the 
most pei'fect and conclusive argument against the lyossih'ility of the 
existence of free institutions any where, and would tend directly and 
certainly to the perpetuation of their monarchical and aristocratical 
systems. So we find that the crowned heads of Europe (with a 
solitary exception,) and her uobility and -aristocracy, almost univer- 



26 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

sally, from their inmost hearts desire the su(?cess of this rebellion, 
and the consequent dismemberment and destruction of this Republic. 
Well, indeed, may they have these sympathies and these desires ; 
for, without question, the wave that engulfs our institutions will 
roll back the tide of political liberty for generations, if not for cen- 
turies ; and the light of the flames which consume our beautiful 
American edifice, will illumine the pathway of despots, mouarchs, 
and aristocrats, and furnish tliem "a piUar of fire by day and of 
cloud by night," long after the present and man}' future genera- 
tions shall have passed away. 

There is no fancy in these statements ; they are sober, solemn, 
suggestive fact. 

Thus it is seen that " slavery" is the cause of the rebellion only 
because, by its intrinsic nature and character, it created in the 
rebel States a " distinction of class" and subordinated the mil- 
lions ofiohite non-slaveholders to the thousands of white slaveholders, 
and thus produced an aristocracy necessarily arrogant, ambitious, 
jealous of interference or encroachment, and determined to perpet- 
uate its privileges and its powers by the continued subordination 
alike of the colored and the white. 

This, they clearly saw, could be accomplished only by means of 
a political structure, whose " corner-stone," as declared by their 
Vice-President Stephens, was " slavery ;" and with prophetic eye 
they discovered that such a structure could not be erected and 
maintained within the temple of the Union, because that sheltered 
and protected vast and increasing multitudes of white men, who 
would sympathize with their non-slaveholding whites, and gradually, 
though certainly, infuse into them ideas of political equality and social 
elevation. They saw the tremendous strides of the non-slavehold- 
ing States in population and in moral, intellectual and material ad- 
vancement under the influence of an antagonistic system of labor ; 
and in that they saw, or thought they saw, the downfall of their 
own social system. They saw that they had but one remedy, viz. : 
the destruction of that temple of Union and the erection outside of 
it, or on its ruins, of their own edifice. The aristocracy of the rebel 
States could not much longer, as they believed, flourish and pre- 
ponderate in the Union ; tJie Union must therefore die. All its 
glories, its prestige, its hallowed associations, the beautiful and 
magnificent promises of its future, must be buried without the hope 
of resurrection in the grave they were preparing for it. They did 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 27 

not, for tliey could 7iof, make any complaint of any injustice, op- 
pression, neglect, on the part of the Government of the Union ; for 
nnder it they had enjoyed, as already stated, unvaried j)rosperity 
and security ; they could not, with the least pretense of truth, as- 
sert any fear of an adverse change hereafter in the jDrinciples and 
measures of the Government; but they could assert that communi- 
ties living under a system of compensated labor and in which all 
white men enjoyed the blessings of education and the consequent 
power of self-elevation, outstripped them in a marvellous degree in 
all the constituent elements of national prosperity and advance- 
ment. They saw, too, as one of their most eminent citizens stated 
in my hearing in Georgia a quarter of a century since, that the 
" spirit of the age" was adverse to their peculiar system. Seeing 
all this, they could not but see that the only chance for the protec- 
tion of that system, and of the " superior class" born of it, was in 
the establishment of an independent empire of their own. They 
did not probably see that such an empire might not endure for 
ever, but this was not material. Thus, incidentally and thus only, 
did " slavery" become a cause of the rebellion. 

On the other hand, " abolition" was equally innocent of being 
its originating cause. Its only share in the matter was, that it fur- 
nished the leading conspirators with a war cry, a shibboleth, to ad- 
dress to the fears, the i3assions and the prejudices of the less en- 
lightened of their own class, and with which to operate effectively 
on the ignorant and deluded masses of the subordinate class. How 
iniluentially they used it, the result mournfully shows. I^o 
man who watched the proceedings day by day of the Charles- 
ton Convention of June, 1860, and the subsequent acts of the 
prominent leaders of the rebellion, will hesitate for a moment to 
say that the real operative motives of those men, in preventing a 
nomination there, was to distract and divide the great Democratic 
party, to render it impossible for them to unite on a Presidential 
candidate, and therehy to insure the election of the candidate (Lin- 
coln) already nominated by the Republican party ; and that object 
being accomplished, to " fire the Southern heart" by the announce- 
ment, in every mode that ingenious falsehood could devise, that 
Abolitionism had triumphed, an Abolitionist had been elected Pres- 
ident ; that the scenes of St. Domingo would speedily be re-enacted 
throughout the rebel States, unless they protected themselves by 
forming a separate and independent government, and that now was 



28 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

tlie time for revolution. The state of things existing in that region 
(as already described), as to popular prejudice, ignorance, delusion 
and credulity, provided a ready and a willing recipient of those 
impassioned appeals. In popular meetings, in private assem- 
blages, in State Conventions, in the newspapers and magazines, in- 
deed, in every possible mode, after tlie meeting of the Electoral 
Colleges in December, 1860, and in fact as soon as the result of the 
election in the Fall of that year was known, the people of the rebel 
States were urged by these incessant appeals of the most inflamma- 
tory character to rise in insurrection against their Government, and, 
in the language of their leaders, " to throw oif the hated yoke of 
abolitionism." And too well did those leaders succeed ; for within 
five months eleven of those States were induced (without, however, 
as I have already stated, ajpopular vote,) to join in the rebellion. The 
fact cannot be denied that, had the Charleston Convention with una- 
nimity and cordiality nominated a candidate, the Democratic party 
would have triumphed, that candidate would have been elected, and 
the spirit of rebellion would have slumbered at least for a while. But 
no event could have been more undesirable to the rebel conspirators, 
for then they could not have raised the war cry of abolition, and their 
overt acts of treason must have been postponed for a season. Were 
these undeniable facts fully understood and appreciated among us, 
it would seem impossible that any man, especially any man of the 
Democratic party, who voted as I did in November, 1S60, for the 
anti-Republican electoral ticket, could, even if uninfluenced by pa- 
triotic considerations, look upon the rebellion and its authors with 
any other feeling than that of deep indignation and absolute loath- 
ing, /c'r the reason that with cruel deliberation and for an infamous 
purpose they distracted, divided and defeated that party in that 
great national election. 

I have thus briefly but tr-uly stated the secret and real motives 
and the actual causes of the rebellion, and without any fear that 
the impartial historian of this eventful time will present a difterent 
picture. The annals of the world afford noinstanc3 of an attempt, 
so wholly and absolutely without meritorious cause and so entirely 
witliout justification or even extenuation, to overthrow an estab- 
lished Government. 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 29 



ly. 

This being so, we must consider and endeavor fully to realize 
the direct and necessary consequences of the rebellion, if successful. 
The more calmly and deliberately such an inquiry is pursued, the 
stronger will be the conviction of the momentous interests involved 
in this struggle and the more brightly will the fire of patriotism 
burn in our hearts. 

This rebellion has often with truth been said to be a rebellion 
against the " best Government on earth ;" that it is wholly without 
reasonable or even plausible cause is a fact established by the history 
of its origin, as has already been stated ; it consequently, in a 
moral point of view, is a crime of unspeakable magnitude. It is in 
essence the work of a comparatively small number of men, incited 
to action by unhallowed ambition and by an earnest hatred of 
democratic institutions, and to whom an extraordinary opportunity 
for iniating their work was afforded by the social system existing 
in those States, and by the condition of the great masses of their 
population in the particulars which have been referred to. In the 
moral aspects of the case it may well be questioned whether those 
masses are chargeable with its iniquity. They, of course, are re- 
sponsible in a legal sense for their acts ; but acting, as they have 
and do, under gross error, delusion, and misrepresentation, and yet, 
as we are led to believe, in the belief of the justice of their cause, 
they stand in the eye of Omniscience and of the world in a moral 
position entirely different from that of those by whom they have 
been induced into their present course. And in speaking of the 
cjnme of this rebellion, the difference in this (the moral) aspect 
between the leading conspirators and the hody of the people of the 
rebel States should never be forgotten. The former are to be exe- 
crated, the latter to he pitied ; and though the practical effects of 
wickedness of the one and of the delusion of the other, combined in 
action as they are, are the same, yet we should never lose sight of 
the moral distinction. The rebellion, under all its circumstances 
and in all its antecedents and concomitants, may well be termed 
the most heinous offense against God and against humanity, of 
which history furnishes any record. Its authors must at some time 
receive the reward due to those, who, to all moral intents, are 
guilty of the murder of the hundreds of thousands of their fellow 



30 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

beings, who, on the one side and on the other, have fallen in this 
conflict. That they, t]ie conspirators^ have sinned against light and 
reason and knowledge, no one can doubt, who knows the manifold 
opportunities they had, from their sujDerior education and from long 
association with their fellow-citizens of the non-slaveholding States, 
of knowing for a certainty^ that the appeals they made to the 
people of the rebel States and which led those States into the 
rebellion — appeals in reference to the dark and wicked designs of 
the Government of the country, and of the people of the North, ou 
the safety, prosperity, and honor of the peoj^le of their portion of 
the Union, were absolutely and unqualifiedly false. They plunged 
a nation enjoying all the manifold blessings of peace into war, a 
war of all others the most dreadful ; a war between brethren of the 
same family ; a war that has reduced their own then flourishing 
and beautiful region into an almost universal waste ; that has 
already cost over half a million of human lives ; has shrouded 
thousands of families in mourning, and excited the fearsand anx- 
ious apprehensions of the lovers of civil liberty and free institutions 
throughout the world. This is their crime ! ! Can its enormity be 
exaggerated ? But this does not embrace the whole, nor even the 
worst, in this catalogue of horrors. The object and ultimate design 
of the rebellion turnish the top-stone in this column of iniquity ; 
for that object and design were to dissolve the Union of these States / 
to dismember our Country, to destroy our Nationality, and to erecfe 
out of a part of the broken ruin a sovereign independent State. 
These were the design and object, and, if accomplished, such would 
be the result. The success of the rebellion, and the consequent 
separation of the rebel States, and their recognition as a distinct and 
sovereign' people would, ij^so facto, work the entire subversion of the 
Union and send back the remainino^ States to their orig-inal con- 
dition as separate States. Instead of being parts of one great and 
united people, instead of being the constituent members of a 7iation, 
each State would thereby and contemporaneously become a distinct 
commonwealth, independent of every other State, and, in a political 
sense, would be in the condition of the provinces that composed the 
distracted and unfortunate Eepublic of Mexico. The Constitution 
would not in any sense remain the constitution of the States not in 
rebellion ; it would instantaneously, with the recognized release of 
the rebel States from its obligations, equally cease to be obligatory 
on the other States ; for it was not adopted as, and never was, the 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 31 

Constitution of those latter States as a body and a people, but of 
the viliole " United States.'''' 

Thus, by the success of the rebellion, two results would inevitably 
follow : First, the departure of the rebel States from the political 
structure existing by means of the Constitution and the Union; 
second, the contemporaneous overthrow of that structure as to all 
the States not in rebellion, and the strewing over them its shattered 
fragments. This idea is one of solemn import, and has been but 
very little considered, and not at all estimated, by us of this portion 
of .the Union; it adds tenfold to the gravity of the crime of the 
rebellion, and is enough to make any reflecting citizen shrink in 
dread from the view. Who has an imagination sufficiently vivid 
to picture the condition of the remaining States in this contin- 
gency ? 

It has often been thoughtlessly said by well-meaning people, "Why 
not let the rebel States go? why not let them depart in peace?" Little 
do such people comprehend the tremendous import, the real nature 
and the utter impracticability of such a sentiment. They do not re- 
flect that there is no existing power under the Constitution of their 
country to carry out the idea. Neither house of Congress by 
itself, nor both houses combined, nor the President with or with- 
out them singly or jointly, have the slightest ability to authorize 
or consent to the separation of any one or more States from the 
Union ; and, were that step as beneflcent as it is in fact .destructive, 
it could by no possibility be taken under the Constitution as it is. 
The continuance in the Union of the States originally-composing it, 
or since constitutionally admitted into it, is as vital to our existence 
as a " nation," as air and food are to the physical existence of indi- 
vidual man. This is the fundamental, integral principle of our 
national vitality; destroy it, and onr national life is gone. ^ In 
the language of an eloquent writer, "The Constitution of the 
United States was the means by which republican liberty was 
saved from the consequences of impending anarch^^ ; it secured 
that liberty to posterity, and left it to depend on their fidelity to 
TUE Union." "It made the people of those several States one 
nation, and gave them a standing among the nations of the 
world." " It is the prominent and all-important cause of our pros- 
perity, and is the great code of civil governme7it wrought by the 
fathers of our Kepublic," * 

* Curtis' Hist. Const., Prf. xi, xIt. 



32 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

" The jpreservation of the Union of the States is essential to tlie 
continuance of their independence and the continuance of repubji-- 
can, constitutional liberty." * 

The " Madison Papers " abound in evidence that Union is the 
distinctive, essential, indispensable, living element of our nation- 
ality, t 

With the ten States now in rebellion, thus being part and parcel 
of its very essence and substance, stricken from it, it is no longer 
the Uiiion formed by the Constitution / it is no longer the nation 
of the " United States of America ;" it ceases to be that people 
known and spoken of by all other people as the "American People.". 
This results necessarily from the very framework of our Govern- 
ment ; the preamble itself to the Constitution declares that it " es- 
tablishes this Constitution for the United States of America," the 
States originally united as well as those that subsequently, accord- 
ing to the Constitution, became united ; it is not, and from its very 
terms it cannot be, the Constitution of ten or twenty or any number 
of States less than the whole ; for the moment that it ceases to be 
the Constitution for the whole, it from the very necessity and nature 
of the case ceases to be the Constitution of any. In this statement 
of the matter there is nothing exaggerated or fanciful ; it is the 
statement of the simple truth, as will be conceded by all who un- 
derstand the theory of our Government. Is it asked then, "is there 
no mode whereby it is possible to destroy this Union and disunite 
these States?" The answer is emphatically No, except by the an- 
nihilation of the Constitution and the consequent ternihiation of our 
national existence. By whatever means the Constitution is annihi- 
lated and overthrown, contemporaneously witli that event, ipso facto, 
eo instanti, occurs our death as a nation and the instant return of 
each State to its original condition of separate sovereignty and in- 
dependence. Then legitimately ensue anarchy, confusion, Mexican 
provincialis7n, no nationcd name, no standing among the nations of 
the world, no power or capacity as a people to assert riglits or pre- 
vent or recfress wrongs, '"'' rudis, indigestaque moles ,'^^ the contempt 
and derision of Christendom ! It is asked, could that state of tilings 
be remedied ? This question no human being can answer. The 
Almighty only knows. The answer depends on a great variety of 
complicated considerations, the effect of diversities of opinion ; col- 

* Curtis' Hist. Const., Vol. II, pp. 10, 75, 1S6-7 ; Vol. I, 487-8. 
t " The Madison Papers," 3 Vols. Washington, 1S40. 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 33 

lisions of personal and local interests ; schemes of individual ambi- 
tion ; moral, political and social theories ; the possible influences of 
suspicion, jealousy and envy ; restless desires for "some new thing;" 
love of excitemeHt and untried experiment; and numerous other 
matters arising out of the peculiarities of our geographical position, 
the imperfections of humanity and the " ideas " of this " progressive 
age." It may, therefore, well be believed, that it is not given to 
man to see with any clearness into the future of such a state of 
things. "Who can tell, even if it be conceded that the ten rebel 
States would, in the event of the dissolution of the Union, become 
united States, whether all, or if not all, how many, of the remain- 
ing twenty-five States would become States united under one con- 
stitution and government and thus become a nation f No one will 
have the hardihood to assert as a certainty, that five, or ten, or 
twenty, or the whole twenty-five, or even any two of those remain- 
ing States would thus re-xmite. It may he that all would ; but what 
power less than Omniscience can authoritatively so declare ? and 
even if such should be the^n.a? result, what in the mean time is to 
be our condition ? and what perils and exposures are we to en- 
counter in the period intermediate the destruction of one govern- 
ment and the establishment of another, the death of one nation and 
the birth of a new one ! It is, undoubtedly, a prevailing idea aniono" 
us (the result wholly of a want of due consideration), that the rebel 
States can be recognized by the States not in rebellion, as* an inde- 
pendent people ; and then, that the last mentioned States are still 
"The United States of America" under the present Constitution. 
It has been shown, I trust, that this is an error as manifest as it is 
perilous. 

But, even if the effect of the success of the rebellion would not, in 
a constitutional and legal sense, be as I have stated, "practically the 
consequences of the recognition of the independence of the rebel 
confedei'acy would be the same; tiie precedent is made, ten States 
leave the Union — any other ten or one or twenty can, on the same 
'principle^ do the same ; the right to secede at will and without 
cause is established ; the Union is a rope of sand and we are no 
longer a nation. 

The name of "American citizen" has been for eighty years a 
proud appellation. By a singular, but for us, beautiful accident, 
if I may so call it, the title of " American" is by the common con- 
sent of the world, Europe, Asia, Africa, and this Western Continent, 
3 



34 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

Exclusively given to the citizens of " The United States ;" and when 
" Ainerican," or " American citizen " is any where spoken of, it 
designates only a citizen of this Republic. There are Mexicans, 
Granadians, Peruvians, Brazilians, Chilians — but no "Americans" 
but oui-selves. It is under this name that we are known and have 
been honored everywhere ; it is the " American" flag that floats in 
power and beauty on every ocean ; it is the "American" Republic 
that is the Eldorado of all, who long for political freedom ; the 
" promised land" of multitudes of the suff'ering and the oppressed 
of other countries ; the asylum now of millions, and the future asy- 
lum of many more millions of our fellow-men, attracted to it by 
the most persuasive and the most fascinating considerations. 

But all this, our own great blessings and the hope and joy and 
stay of such multitudes elsewhere are but as "dust in the balance" 
in the view of the heartless conspirators of the rebellion, and are to 
be swept away for ever to gratify their personal ambition and their 
antipathy to the institutions founded by the common eff'orts and 
sacrifices of their and our fathers. The picture of the unexampled 
distress, desolation and misery alread}'^ caused by the rebellion, can- 
not be overdrawn ; its horrors, so long as this war continues, will 
equal or surpass those already witnessed ; and should it — through 
the curse of God — prove successful, the page which records that 
success and its eftects for generations to come on the great cause of 
civil and religious libert}'-, will be the gloomiest, the most frightful 
in all history. When we know, as we do, the absolute causelessness 
of the rebellion ; when we look at the awful mass of human misery 
it has already produced and is still to produce, and when we con- 
sider its direful efi"ects, if successful, on the highest and most hal- 
lowed interests of humanity, we involuntarily stand aghast at the 
spectacle. And while we weep tears of sorrow over the infatuation 
and delusion of the unfortunate masses in the rebel States, who have 
been deceived and persuaded into a participation in this awful work, 
we are at a loss to characterize the enormity of the guilt of the chief 
criminals. 

By the great blessing of Almighty God, in induing with almost 
superhuman wisdom the Constitutional Convention of 17S7, the 
"American" people have a Constitution whose perfect fitness for 
their national purposes has been fully proved by experience. It 
has been found to be in all respects adequate to the safe and happy 
government of the wiiole of our present imperial territory and 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 35 

population ; and as adequate to the government of that territory 
and that population and any I'utui'e increase of the latter, as it was 
for the government of the limited tei-ntoiy of the thirteen original 
States and tlieir three millions of inhabitants. It is this blessed 
Constitution, which the rebellion is designed to overthrow ; and thus 
to involve this favored land in anarchy, confusion, and dread un- 
certainty ! ! 

The vast body of the people of the States not in rebellion, by 
whatever party name they may be called, love our institutions and 
the Constitution which originated and preserves them ; not one in 
ten thousand sympathizes in this respect with the rebel aristocracy. 
Occasionally indeed such an anomaly is found among us. Since 
the commencement of the rebellion, I have seen one professed 
member of the Republican and one of the Democratic party, who 
each said, that he was indiiferent to the result of this war; and when 
asked the reason, answered, that he did not consider man capable of 
self-government, and therefore did not desire the perpetuity of our 
institutions. But such sentiments are so rare here as to be of no 
practical moment. I will, before I conclude this paper, explain 
the apparently unaccountable course of many among us in reference 
to the rebellion — unaccountable, if we believe, as I do, that those 
very men, with a few exceptions, are sincerely attached to our in- 
stitutions, are at heart patriotic and not justly obnoxious to the 
charge of disloyalty to their country. 

I have thus, within the limits which the occasion demands, but 
by no means with the fullness which the unspeakable importance 
of the subject requires, stated the causes and motives of the rebellion, 
its objects and designs and its consequences, if successful. The 
picture is full of horror — but it is the horror of naked,' unvarnished 
truth. 

y. 

Can a scheme so fraught with iniquity and evil succeed ? From 
my inmost heart I rejoice to say, that its success is impossible. I 
believe in a Grod of Justice, of Truth, of Mercy and of Love. So 
believing, I cannot believe that He will permit the final triumph of 
a scheme, whose whole origin nature and object are at variance 
with each and every of those His attributes; I cannot believe, that 
He will regard with favor and crown with success a most stupendous 



36 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

crime against heaven and earth. I cannot believe that He will per- 
mit the destruction of a nation whicli He has thus far signally 
blessed, and which to all human view He has raised up as a great 
palladium of civil and religious liberty; a nation distinguished from 
all others by institutions the best fitted to enable His creature man, 
to he a man', a nation so situated, territorially and geographically, 
and by the cluii-acter of its institutions, as to justify in the enlight- 
ened phihmthropist the brightest hopes of her eiFective instrumen- 
tality in the final civilization and Christianization of those races of 
the world which are now in darkness. 

He has deeply atfiicted and distressed the nation. This affliction 
and distress may for a time be continued, but we may be permitted 
to believe, that all tliis comes as a punishment for national and 
individual sins and is intended to bri^ig us back to a higher and a 
better, a more vivid and realizing sense of the favors we have re- 
ceived ; that it is designed for our purification and improvement and 
to prepare us the better to act our great part on the theatre of the 
world ; thar in His own " aj)pointed time and season," He will cause 
these sufl^erings to cease and will restore us individually and nation 
ally to our former condition of unity and concord, bettered in every 
high sense by our trials. 

To this faith in the rigliteousness of our cause and the consequent 
favor and protection it will receive from the Great Disposer of 
events, we are enabled to add existing facts, furnishing as I conceive, 
sure grounds for the unqualified assertion, that this rebellion must 
at no remote period come to a close, disastrous and ignominious to 
its authors and abettors, and gi-ateful and satisfactory to all patriotic 
men among us and to all elsewhere who love and cherish our iu- 
ptitutions of "Republican liberty." 

The actual commencement of the war of the rebellion was in 
April, 1861. At that time the population of the States now in 
rebellion exclusive of slaves, was less than five millions, and of the 
remaining States, about twenty-four millions: the aggregate wealth 
and material power and resources of the former as compared with 
the latter, were in about the same proportion. This statement 
alone would seem to render it absolutely certain that, in a conflict 
between the two parties with such an overwhelming preponderance 
of ])opulation and material power on the one side, the latter must 
ultimately triumph. To hold the contrary would be to contradict 
all human experience and to believe that weakness is superior to 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 37 

strength. The utmost that could be said would be, tliat tlie weaker 
might prolong the contest beyond the brief period tliat would, 
under such circumstances, seem ])rol)able ; but to believe that the 
party so wholly interior in physical power could ultimately be 
victorious, would seem to be the vagaiy of a disordered intellect. 
We are now in the fourth year of this war; and while we may well 
be astonished that the rebel confederacy has under all the circum- 
stances been able even so long to maintain it, in looking to the 
future we must contrast their and our noio existing means and 
resources with the means and resources of each as they existed at 
the beginning of the conflict. ' 

(1.) I will barely allude, without particularizing, to the immense 
losses of territory sustained by them first, in the entire pi'actical 
withdrawal from the confederacy, of Western Virginia, Tennessee, 
Missouri; second, in the failure to obtain the accession of the States 
of Maryland and Kentucky, of whose co-operation they had the 
strongest hopes and expectations in Api-il, 1861 ; third, in the actual 
occupation by ns of large portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louis- 
iana, and of very important parts of Florida, Georgia, South 
Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama. Thus, in this particular, 
they are shorn in July, 1864, of a vast amount of strength and 
power they actually possessed or confidently calculated upon in 
April, 1861. 

(2.) It would be useless, were it possible, to specify with accuracy 
the frightful losses of men and material sustained by them thus far 
in this contest ; reliable and authentic statements show, that of their 
population capable of bearing arms, about one half million have 
already been lost to them by death, disease and desertion. It re- 
quires but a bare comparison of their number with the number of 
arms-bearing men in a population of twenty millions to discover 
how disastrous, not to say ruinous, such a loss must be. 

(8.) It is well known that already the most relentless and universal 
conscription* throughout the rebel States has been resorted to to 
fill up the ranks of their army ; few if any between 16 and 60 escape ; 
throughout that whole region it is a well ascertained fact, that there 
are scarcely enough able-bodied white men left even to control and 

* The following is an extract from a letter of an officer of our Army, dated " Near Atlanta, 
July 16, 1864:" "It is but little Northern people know of the terrible and grinding system 
of oppression that is exercised by the leaders of tiiis rebellion over those who are within 
their influence. Thousands of men are forced into this rebel army against their will, and 
are compelled to fight us, while they would willingly be with us." 



38 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

direct the labor of the slaves and to perform other duties, not mili- 
tary, but indispensable to the carrying; on of the war. 

In truth, as to this class of people, that region is in every practical 
sense depopulated. The effect of this upon their future is too evi- 
dent to require comment. 

(4.) It is the concurrent testimony of all our officers and men who 
have had the opportunity of personal observation, and of the state- 
ments of the public papers throughout the rebel States, (with ex- 
tracts from which we arfe often furnished,) that there is, if not a 
universal, a very extensive want of most of the necessaries of life 
in a large proportion of their territory. It does not require pro- 
phetic vision to discover that this is an evil which, under their cir- 
cumstances, cannot grow less. On the contrary, from the very 
nature and circumstances of the case, it must continually become 
more and more intolerable. 

(5.) The pecuniary condition, both of the rebel government and 
of the people, is to the last degree desperate. Their public debt is 
worthless, their public credit wholly gone, and the currency so de- 
graded that, according to recent advices from their " seat of govern- 
ment" and other places in that region, the prices of every necessary 
and comfort of life are truly frightful.* How long, in this financial 
condition, will it be in the power of that government to furnish 
the indispensable munitions of war, and the pay, clothing, and 
rations of their soldiers ? 

(6.) In extensive portions of many of the rebel States, as in Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, all 
the sufferings of war have been, and are now being experienced, at 
the very doors of the people; in all their other States to a greater 
or less extent, its evils and its distress have been brought directly to 

* The following were the hotel prices at Staunton, in Virginia, in June last: "Board and 
room, per day, %'2Q ; fire in room, extra, per day, $3 ; supper, lodging and breakfast, f 15 ; 
single meal, $6." On the 30th of April last, in an important Southern city, the following 
■were the prices: " Butter, $5 per pound ; lard, $4 00 to 4 50 ; flour, $225 to 250 per barrel ; 
rice, $45 to 40 per hundred; meal, |;7 per bushel ; bacon, ^4 per lb. ; salt pork, do; fresh 
beef, %2 50 to 3 per lb. ; fresh pork, JsS 40 to $4; dried apples or peaches, $5 per pound; 
green peas, in shell, %'2 50 per quart; strawberries, per quart, with stems, §5; a cabbage 
head, from $3 to 5 ; and all other things in the eating line in proportion. Tea, §(35 per 
pound; coffee, $20. A very common dress coat, $250, and from that up to $1,000. A thin 
Summer coat, from $300 to $100 ; a shirt, $50 ; shoes, $25 ; calico, $12 per yard ; a silk dress 
pattern, $600, ^vhich will buy one hundred and fifty pounds of pork, or six pairs of ladies' 
shoes. A quart of milk, one dollar; a cow which will give twelve quarts of milk, from $600 
to $1,000; pigs, $25." The following extract from an Atalanta paper shows the prices at 
Riciimond in July, 1864: " The Richmond hotels are now kept on the European plan, and 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 39 

the homes of thousands.* The prevailing ignorance and dehision in 
those regions, as they rendered the masses an easy prey to the 
machinations and wiles of the arch-conspirators, so they operate to 
conceal from them the truth in relation to the fatal blow their cause 
has already received,t and tend to deaden them for the time to the 
wide-spread distress they see around them. 

When will this ignorance and this stolid submission end ? They can- 
not on any principle known to human nature long continue, and on the 
coming of the hour, when the eyes of those masses shall be opened 
to the dread realities surrounding them, to the desperateness of the 
rebellion and to the true and real causes which produced it, there 
will, we have every reason to believe, be witnessed on the part of 
the peoi^e of the rebel States an uprising against the authors of 
their calamities, the throwing off the iron yoke of despotism, and 
a clamorous, resistless demand to return to the protection of that 
Government under which they had known nothing but peace, tran- 
quillity, and security. Beyond all question, the great bulk of that 
people have been sincere in the delusion, that they were contend- 
ing for their homes, property, and civil rights ; indeed, they have 
been more than sincere, they have been enthusiastic — and enthusi- 

every article called for at the table adds to the ' bill of fare' in a double sense. The follow- 
ing is the schedule up to the latest dates : Bacon and salad, $0 ; roast beef, $6 ; beef steak, 
%(i ; beef steak and onions, $8 ; tenderloin, $7 ; mutton chops, $i5 ; pork steak, $6 ; soup, $2 ; 
fried onions, ?3 ; pure cotfee, per cup, $5 ; mustard, $-2 ; lettuce, $3 : boiled ham, §7 ; ham 
and (2) eggs, $10; butter (small taste of), $3. A single meal for a gentleman and his friend, 
dining as ante beUuni, costs not less than $100." Of course, all the above were in rebel 
currency. 

* In illustration of this, I select from multitudes of similar published statements, the fol- 
lowing from a recent reliable letter from Texas : " The entire male population, except boys 
and old men, are in the war. The ground is left untitled. Manufactures we never had. 
Our herds of cattle and sheep, once our food, with our horses, all our wealth, are driven off 
or lying dead on our prairies, breeding sickness among us. Civil law — we do not know 
what it means. Every man relies on his six-shooter, or lets his property go without com- 
plaint. Schools, preaching, churches, have all been abandoned. The taxes levied by 
statute would take the largest share of the property. We are now eating the remainder of 
our last year's corn, and in cases not a few the beef that dies from starvation, with no 
present prospect that we shall have even these long." 

t The same writer last quoted, says : " During the war we hare been invariably success- 
ful. We have beaten the United States armies in every battle everywhere. We have killed 
more men and taken more prisoners (according to the published reports) than there were 
inliabitants in the loyal States at the last census. We have taken and burnt Washington I 
don't know how many times. We have driven the Government to Philadelphia, New York, 
and Cincinnati, each in turn, and tinally we took the President and Cabinet all prisoners. 
We have made successful invasions through the Western States, to and including Chicago. 
Gen. Lee, last Summer, took Gettysburg, Chambersburg, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore and Washington, all in a single week. The man came on here in person who 
went with the army the whole distance, and staid two days after it entered Washington. 



40 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

asm, whether m a good or in a had cause, produces the same results 
of patient suffering, obstinate perseverance, bold and reckless per- 
sonal courage ; and all these qualities have those people exhibited 
in abundance. 

The same enthusiasm and delusion led the Musselman under Ma- 
homet to deeds of terrible daring in the wars with the '" infidels :" 
they were taught to regard, and did regard the killing of a " Chris- 
tian" as a sure passport to Paradise. So the Crusaders in the Mid- 
dle Ages, under a similar influence, exhibited unexampled personal 
heroism in their struggles for the recovery of Jerusalem .; sincerely 
believing, as they were taught to believe, that a participation in 

Our most intelligent men believe all this. And those of us who doubted that an army could 
move so fast or far, were careful not to say it. England, France and Russia have recog- 
nized our independence, and promised us aid several times. Generally the intelliujence was 
official, always certain. Our bonds— Confederate and State— were at a premium in Eiiiope. 
Money was pressed upon our Government, all and more than it needed. Even in Wall 
street our Confederate bonds were worth more tlian the United States bonds. Our soldiers 
were well fed aad clothed, and everywhere (except right here) contented and in the best 
courage. The slaves (except also here) were a unit, clinging to their masters, and resisting 
emancipation. Our paper currency was as good as gold all over the Confederacy, (except 
again right here.) Don't think I have exaggerated. This is the uniform unbroken testi- 
mony of our papers, and preachers, and our stump speakers. Add to this that the United 
States were just on the brink of ruin — their debt overwhelming— their currency worthless — 
the time of service of their soldiers out, and they could not be coaxed or forced into the 
ranks again — do draft could be enforced — their people very unanimous against the war — 
and the President only able to exist by the protection of body guards. Why then should 
we not be in good courage— why not finish up the work, and, in the cant phrase of the day, 
' gain our liberties?' From having regular and reliable mails, we have none in one-half 
of the State, and only get a letter or newspaper by chance conveyance. This, with verbal 
rumors, is our only source of information. We know literally nothing of the world outside 
of us. We have a rumor of trouble in Europe, but of its cause and condition we are 
ignorant. Till we saw New York papers, we knew nothing of the movements in Arkansas 
or Louisiana, for the reconstruction of loyal State Government, nor of the Emancipation 
movement in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, etc. Such things are not told here. In fact 
we have learned more from these papers, about afl'airs in the United States and abroad, 
than we have known before during the whole war. It took us more than two months last 
Summer to find out that Vicksburg was captured. Our papers stoutly denied it, even 
after the paroled soldiers came home. And to this hour we are told that no boat can pass 
up or down the river — that they are fired into and sunk. Our currency is useless ; it will 
buy nothing. And yet our papers and our patriots tell us, that to tnake any difference 
between a paper and a silver dollar, is a crime deserving of punishment or hanging." The 
following is an extract from the editorial in the leading newspaper in Texas, the Hunnton 
Daily Telegraph, of the 21st of March last: " The Confederate army has whipped the Yan- 
kees all out of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Gen. Lee is driving Gen. Meade into 
Washington City, and will soon have the city itself. In one month we shall have Sau 
Francisco and all California. Secretary Seward is sick, and gone home to die of chagrin. 
The President and Secretary Chase are so down-spirited as to be really pitiable objects. It 
is all the United States can do to keep our troops from overflowing the entire Free States, 
And they have given up the idea and the attempt to conquer us." Volumes might be filled 
with similar extracts from papers in every rebel State. And these monstrous falsehooils 
are believed by that people, and on this belie/ they act. 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 41 

that holy work would insure them everlasting bliss in Heaven. 
The enthusiasm of these misguided men of the rebel States is, in 
character, identical with that of the followers of Mahomet in his 
day and of the Crusaders in theirs ; but such a "passion" from its 
very nature cannot be enduring ; and in the case now before ils, we 
have no right to doubt, that ere long it will " burn out" and that 
reason will resume its sway ; and then, that the rebellion will end 
through means of the very men by whom its authors have thus 
far been able to sustain it. 

(7.) Irrespective wholly of all questions of "abolition" and of all 
" sympathy for the slave," can any intelligent observer doubt, that 
under existing circumstances, the enormous slave population of the 
rebel States is to them an element not only of weakness, but of the 
most alarming danger, nay, of certain ruin.* Conceding the 
degradation and stolidity of that race, the events of the last three 
years have shown that the distinction between slavery and freedom 
is understood by vast numbers, if not by the great majority of 
them ; that they have sufficient intelligence to make that distinction 
and sufficient of human nature to prefer freedom to bondage. In 
every part of that land they have heard, in the private conversa- 
tions of their masters, in public addresses, and in various other 
modes, that this war was a war for the " abolition of slavery," and 
however false the assertion, while it subserved the intended pur- 
pose of its authors in " firing the hearts" of the whites, it subserved 
at the same time the unintended purpose of "firing" in another 
way " the hearts of the blacks." That ideas of freedom are widely 
disseminated among that class is not to be disputed. Moreover, 
thousands of them have been employed by the rebels themselves 
in various kinds of military work, and in some instances, as is well 
known, in actual military service. According to authentic accounts, 
not far from one hundred thousand of the black race are now 
fighting as soldiers in the army of the Union ; and from the best 
authority we learn, that they have in this capacity done no dis- 
honor to the flag under which they go into battle. None but he 
who doggedly shuts his eyes to the truth can fail to see that the 
slave population of that region, as slaves^ is demoralized ; that, as 
an element of productive labor, it cannot long be relied on ; that as 

* Mr. Cobden in a recent letter to a friend in this country well says, that " It is the con- 
dition of the South through the operation of the w ir on the African ro^ce, that I. have always 
regarded as the real source of weakness and danger to the South." 



42 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

soldiers in the cause which their masters have taught them is 
the cause of " Slaveiy," and against the cause which they have 
learned from the same masters is the cause of " Freedom," it is 
morally impossible that they can be availably used, whereas on 
every principle and motive of human conduct (and in this regard, 
debased as they may intellectually and morally be, they must at 
least be conceded to be human heings), as well as from actual 
recent e^cperience, we are entirely justified in the belief that they 
are destined now and hereafter to be a " thorn " in the side of the 
rebel confederacy and materially to add to the number and the 
effective power of the armies of the Union. 

Much more might be added to this catalogue oi facts, going to 
show the insuperable difficulties under which the rebellion labors, 
and, under the influences of wliich at no remote period it must 
totter to its fall. 

We will now take a brief view of the condition of things 
correlatively in the States, which sustain the Constitution and the 
Union. 

The overwhelming superiority of these latter States at the inaug- 
uration of the rebellion, in all that constitutes material or physical 
strength, and the natural, and it may well be said, the inevitable 
result of such a state of things have already been mentioned. Has 
the relative position of the parties been changed to the disadvan- 
tage of these States up to this period? I have already stated 
several particulars proving that the progress of the rebel States has 
been, in every practical sense, eminently " backward ;" and that 
even if there was with them at the dawn of this awful day any 
brightness, that brightness has disappeared. 

'I will now very succinctly show the contrast between our present 
condition and the present condition of the i-ebel States in the fore- 
going particulars; and demonstrate, that while their condition and 
their prospects are incomparably worse than at the commencement 
of the rebellion, ours are in every essential respect vastly improved. 

(1.) Having spoken of the loss of territory and of States they had 
confidently relied on, it is merely necessary in marking the con- 
trast to say, that our gain is in proportion to their loss; and when 
we see the magnitude of their loss, we, at the same time, see the 
corresponding magnitude of our gain. 

(2.) A¥hile it may be granted (though it is believed to bo by no 
means the fact) that our losses in men numerically and in materials 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 43 

of war in quantity are not less than tlieirs, still, when it is au un- 
deniable fact that our resources in these respects were at least five 
times greater than theirs, so it follows, that practically the loss 
they sustain, is in the same proportion greater than that suffereel by 
US — in other words, that Avhile in those particulars they, from the 
very necessity of the case, are at the point of exhaustion, we are 
not essential!}' impaired in strength and are at this moment fully 
able to meet all necessary additional demands upon us. 

(3.) While in the rebel States the most relentless conscription 
has done its sweeping and desolating work, no such step has beeri 
adopted or suggested here ; the moderate resort we have made to 
the draft is a measure wholly different in character and result : the 
latter calls for a very small proportion of the whole body of male 
citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, and enables 
those, on whom the lot falls, if they have the means and the inclina- 
tion, to relieve themselves by substitute ; whereas the former, by its 
despotic and ruthless operation, compels into the army all male citi- 
zens between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five. The one is the 
mode of a paternal government, the other is the creature of a 
frightful despotism. It has resulted, as already remarked, in the 
depopulation of that region as to this class of its inhabitants, 
while we are still left with our millmis of men of that description. 

(4.) In none of the States not in rebellion (except in some 
comparatively small portions of the States of Tennessee, Missouri, 
and Western Virginia,) is there the slightest want of all {\\q neces 
saries and comforts and even luxuries of life. No complaint of this 
kind has been heard among us. The war has not, in this respect, 
had any perceptible influence ; it has not been felt. 

(5.) While multitudes of individual citizens of the rebel States 
have been reduced, by reason of the rebellion, from affluence to 
poverty, and still greater numbers have suflered distressing pecu- 
niary loss, such eff'ects are scarcely known here ; they form the ex- 
ception to the rule. A small number have sustained serious 
pecuniary injury, resulting almost entirely from the investment of 
means directly or indirectly in private or public indebtedness in the 
rebel States. Indeed, on the contrary, our citizens, as a general 
rule, have been pecuniarily benefited by the war. No class among 
us, mercantile, manufacturing, agricultural, or mechanical was 
ever more prosperous. The same favorable contrast exists in the 
financial condition of our Government. While the rebellion has 



-44 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

devolved on us the necessity of raising very large sums for its sup- 
pression, the confidence of all classes in the credit of the Govern- 
ment is such, that no difficulty has been experienced in obtaining 
on its securities all that was required ; this has been obtained prin- 
cipally from our own people in sums varying from fifty doHars to 
millions.* This great debt is thus mainly distributed among thou- 
sands of our citizens in all the walks of life. At this moment, in 
all our important financial centres, this debt commands a premium. 
True, the necessarily vast increase of the currency for the time be- 
ing has raised gold to an exorbitant price ; but this artificial value 
will in due time and without, it is confidently believed, producing 
material injury, disappear and every article, including gold, will 
return to its true value. That the universal confidence now felt in 
our public securities rests on a real basis, and that the Government 
debt will be honorably and honestly paid, I shall show before I 
close this paper. 

(6.) I have mentioned the prevailing misery and distress through- 
out the rebel States, the desolation of many of the heretofore most 
prosperous and happy portions of that region ; indeed, in one word^ 
the horrors of war experienced by them by actual war in their 
midst. We are total strangers to this dreadful suftering. Traverse 
all our States, visit town and country, nowhere will be discovered 
any indication of our being engaged in war, much less a war whose 
proportions have not been equaled in modern times. To all ap- 
pearance, peace, tranquillity, security, everywhere prevail and as 
the appearance is, so is the reality. We are strangers to the prac- 
tical evils and distress of war. With an occasional slight excep- 
tion, not a single one of our States has been the theatre of military 
contest. True, tens of thousands of our citizens are enrolled in our 
armies and are fighting, far from their firesides, the battles of the 
Republic. Mournfully true, multitudes of these gallant men have 
been ofifered up on the altar of their country ; great domestic af- 
fliction has resulted ; still, so far as the general eflect is concerned, 
it may be asserted with literal accuracy, that we are entire stran- 
gers to the terrific desolation which has been experienced in such 
melancholy profusion in every rebel State. 

(7.) After the experience furnished by upwards of three years of 
war, theory and a priori reasoning as to the eflect of slavery on the 

* Over $40,000,000 of the loan offered in June last was taken, principally by our citizens, 
at an average premium of over four per cent. 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 45 

rebel cause, give place to fact and reality. That it is to that cause 
a source of weakness and to the cause of the Union a source of 
strength, is fully established. This proposition might well be stated 
in stronger terms ; it might truly be said, that the servile popula- 
tion of the rebel States is, under existing circumstances, a most 
perilous, if not a fatal, ingredient in the cup they have mixed for 
themselves. And when that cup has been drained to its last bit- 
ter dregs, aijiong the bitterest will be found the residuum of the in- 
stitution of slavery. 

Very much more might be said in reference to the effect of 
slavery on the rebel cause ; but I have not intended in this paper 
to do more than present a brief outline of the material matters af- 
fecting the great question before us, and thus rather to suggest 
ideas than to furnish a full exhibition of facts and the various con- 
clusions legitimately flowing from them. The comparison I have 
thus briefly instituted between the relative condition of the States 
I in rebellion and of those not in rebellion, as that condition was at 
the inauguration of the rebellion and as it now is, must convince 
the most incredulous, that however sanguine the hopes and how- 
ever bright the prospects of the rebels may have been at the be- 
ginning, the " stern logic" of now existing facts has destroyed all 
foundation for those hopes and has shrouded those prospects in the 
deepest gloom. 

It may be emphatically stated, that the great body of the 
people of the States not in rebellion, irrespective of party, 
has solemnly and irreversibly resolved that their nationality shall 
not be destroyed ; that the proud name of " American Citizen " 
shall not be obliterated ; that their country shall not be disinte- 
grated and converted into as many petty, warring, discordant, insig- 
nificant provinces as there are now States ; that " Republican lib- 
erty" shall not perish ; and having so resolved, they have by nec- 
essary consequence resolved, that the Union must and shall be 
preserved ; and in order thereto, that the States in rebellion shall 
never — ?i6>, never — be recognized as a nation, and that the rebel- 
lion shall be wholly, absolutely and for ever crushed. That such 
is the fixed determination and stern resolution of the great hulk of 
our people is susceptible of clear demonstration. 



•"46 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

VI. 

The facts and considerations already presented show the impossi- 
bility of the success of the rebellion ; its designs cannot be accom- 
plished ; those States cannot leave the Union and become an inde- 
pendent nation. The precise day of the final extinction of this 
scheme for national destruction cannot at this moment be stated ; 
every thing indicates that it is not remote. In view of, this certain 
result, the status of the several States and especially of the rebel 
States at its termination, becomes a question of unspeakable im- 
portance. Various theories have been advanced, and various plans 
suggested for what is termed " re-construction." In my judgment 
that term is entirely inapplicable and its use leads only to error 
and confusion. We cannot "re-construct" that which has not been 
destroyed ; and the very first proposition, the fundamental idea, is 
that the Union not only is not, but cannot be, destroyed by the re- 
bellion. What, then, is to be the condition of the rebel States at 
its overthrow and how are they then to be regarded and treated ? 

1. The answer to this question is not difiicult, if we give due at- 
tention to two matters : first, to the fact, that underlies our very 
existence as a nation and which is inseparable from the very idea 
of our nationality, viz. : that the Union is not dissolved, but stands 
on the same firm and enduring basis on which it was originally 
erected; second, the great fundamental principle, tfiat the Consti- 
tution must he preserved sacredly inviolate in its every provision. 
The absolutely vital importance of not infringing on or violating 
in any manner this fundamental charter, this very essence of our na- 
tional life, is a proposition heartily adopted by every true American 
citizen. I cannot better state this matter than in the eloquent and 
forcible words of Count de Gasperin.* Knowing the desire ex- 
pressed by some overzealous men that the President should pro- 
claim "universal " emancipation, he says, "The independence of 
the States must be protected with jealous care." "I counsel no 
measure that would not be strictly constitutional. I should have 
grossly contradicted myself if, after having advised Americans to 
preserve their institutions and retain them at the end of the war as 
they were at its beginning, I had urged them to violate them in 
their fundamental principle. The liherty of the States is no less 

* " America before Europe," pp. S62, 367, 368. His other great work, " The Uprising of 
a Great People," contains similar warnings. 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 47 

important to be maintained than the sovereignty/ of the 7iation. A 
rebellion by the Sontli against the Constitution shonld not be com- 
batted by a similar rehellion by the North. The two original fea- 
tures of the American organization shonld neither perish in the 
fnrnace of civil war. It will be glorions to see the United States 
come out of it with their local independence and their national 
unity alike nnin)paired." 

This is the testimony of a distinguished and earnest friend of our 
country, and whose w'orks have produced, and will long continue to 
produce, in Europe, the most benign influences in our behalf. He 
expresses this sentiment while, at the same time, he is a most ardent 
advocate of negro emancipation everywhere. I make this extract 
merely to show the sensitiveness on this subject of those eminent 
foreigners, who know and love us best; they realize, even more vividly 
than ourselves, any departure from the " great charter" of our liberties 
as fraught with inconceivable peril. Keeping in mind tX\efaGt and 
tho, principle lw?>t mentioned, the result necessarily follows, that the 
rebel States are, (as they have never in a legal and constitutional 
sense ceased to be,) members of the Union — component parts of the 
" American Nation," States of " the United States of America." 
But the people of those States are in rebellion against the Govern- 
ment, seeking to destroy the Union by the overthrow of the Con- 
stitution ; and while in this condition, the performance of their 
duties and fulfillment of their obligations as members of the Union, 
are by their own act prevented, and, in a constitutional sense, their 
State functions in that regard (that is, as members of the Uunion,) 
are in a condition of suspension. What, then, is the first, the in- 
dispensable step to be taken by the Government of the Nation ? 
Obviously, it is to crush the rehellion, to end it in toto. To this re- 
sult the entire destruction of the military jyower of those States is 
an indispensable preliminary. "Extermination," "subjugation," in 
reference to the pecyple of those States, "extinction" of their State 
Governments as State Governments, are the words of fanaticism 
or of folly. Annihilation of their military power is the demand 
of wisdom, of patriotism, of duty to tlie Republic. And by military 
power I mean not only armies in the field, but all armed bodies 
small and large and everywhere. Without the accomplishment 
of this object, vain is all endeavor effectually to quell the rebellion 
and thus restore its wonted peace, tranquillity and security to our 
country. 



48 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

The reason of the absolute necessity to this great end of this entire 
annihilation of that military power is obvious. If that continues 
even in a slight degree, even in the form of bands of guerrillas, 
no real security would exist for the complete ascendancy ofthelaw, 
and for its thorough, absolute, and effective administration. Courts 
could not be held, their judgments could not be executed, if liable 
to interference from armed men, even in small numbers. 

It is certain that there can be no real or available restoration of 
domestic tranquillity throughout our borders, no full restoration of 
the Union to the " status in quo ante 'belluin^'' no replacement of all 
its members under the segis of the Constitution, until the period ar- 
rives when the judicial tribunals of our country can, in all respects, 
execute their functions as safely and as efficiently on the banks 
of the Alabama, the Chattahoochee, the Santee, the Pedee and 
tlie James, as they now do on the banks of the Hudson and the 
Delaware. And this period cannot come, so long as there is any 
more danger from military violence of any sort in the former than in 
the latter regions. 

Let it not be said that the idea of such and so complete an anni- 
hilation of military power in the rebel States is a mere " whisper 
of fancy" or " vision of hope." On the contrary, it is capable of 
complete and speedy realization. 

Overwhelm the rebel armies in the field, scatter them as organ- 
ized bodies, dissipate their corps, divisions, brigades and regiments, 
and all other required results in this respect are easy of attainment. 
We are not to forget that in that case the Government of the Uni- 
ted States would have a numerous, powerful, victorious army ready 
and desirous to enforce the Constitution and the laws of their country^ 
and to ensure domestic peace and tranquillity everywhere. More- 
over, none can be so willfully blind as not to see that in the then ex- 
isting state of things the black male population of the rebel States 
would, under the control and guidance of our intelligent, patriotic 
and accomplished officers, of whom there is an abundance, furnish 
to the Government a physical force fully adequate to the sweep- 
ing away of every roving guerrilla and of effectually abolishing 
that inhuman and barbarous mode of warfare, and thus affordirig 
perfect protection, in every portion of the land, to the tribunals of 
justice in the exercise of their judicial duties and powers, and of 
securing everywhere the due and just execution of the " laws of the 
land." I advert to this effective and available force merely to show 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 49 

that as protection to tlie courts of justice would in tlie event sup- 
posed, be indispensable, so the Government would possess the un- 
doubted physical power of furnisiiing that protection ; while at 
the same time it is highly improbable that the necessity for using 
that power would ever arise. Why should it ? At the period sup- 
posed, the rebel armies will have been driven from the field and 
their military power as a people will have ceased ; they will be pow- 
erless as to sustaining even the semblance of military organiza- 
tion ; without this, it will be palpable even to themselves, that fur- 
ther resistance to the Constitution and the laws would be wholly 
in vain ; and taught as they already are by bitter experience, an 
experience the bitterness of which will daily from this hour to that 
become more and more intense, it is accordant with every dictate 
of human reason and every principle and motive of human action 
to believe, that then the scales will fall from the eyes of that peo- 
ple ; that they will discern the error and delusion under which 
they have acted and that they will return to the blessed household 
of their and our fathers as cheerfully and fraternally as we shall 
welcome them back to it. I say " that people," in which term I 
do not include the leading spirits of the rebellion— the awful weight 
of moral guilt resting on them renders wholly and for ever impos- 
sible tlieir admission to so pure and sacred a place as our "Temple 
of Liberty." What shall be their ultimate fate their own people 
may by that time be ready and willing to decide. It is thus 
seen, (1.) That the total annihilation of the military power of the 
rebellion is an indispensable pre-requisite to restoration. (2.) That 
that annihilation is practicable and, it may be added, certain. 

The question will then directly arise, what is the condition of the 
rebel States, and with what rights, powers and privileges do they 
practically resume their place in the Union. I say practical! i/, be- 
cause theoretically and legally they have never been out of it. 
The answer to this question is easy to all who understand the prin- 
ciples of our complex ])olitical system, our '■'■ ir)iperia in imperioy 
That answer is, that they resume their place as members of the 
Union precisely as they were at the commencement of the rebel- 
lion, namely : with all their rights, powers and privileges as States 
sul)ject to the great fnndamental rule, that the Constitution of the 
United States and all legislative and executive acts, pursuant to and 
in accordance with it, are the supreme law of the land, and that to 
that law the Constitutions and laws of each State are subordinate. 
4 



50 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

They return to the Union, under and subject to the Constitution 
and to the laws and executive acts of the Government of the United 
States accordant with the Constitution and then in force. 

This and this only is the true theory of restoration, the only mode 
by which the Constitution can be preserved for them and for us ; in 
other w^ords, the only salvation for the Government and the Union ; 
the only safeguard against national disintegration ; the only protec- 
tion against anarchy and confusion and national ruin. This being 
the rule and the principle, let us consider their operation practically. 
The Constitution speaks for itself; it stands unchanged and un- 
changeable (except in the mode itself prescribes) : then the first in- 
quiry will necessarily be, what laws and executive acts of the Gover- 
ment of the United States, pursuaiit to and accordant with the 
Constitution, are then in force ? Such acts are, as already remarked, 
like the Constitution itself, the supreme law of the land — to them as 
to the Constitution, the Constitution and the laws of each State 
must yield. In a practical point of view, the main acts of the 
kind alluded to, and which will then be of any material impor- 
tance, are the Confiscation Act of Congress of July, 1862 ; the 
President's Proclamation pursuant thereto,* and the Emancipation 

* A Proclamation. By the President of the United States of America. In pursuance 
of the sixth section of the act of Congress entitled " An Act to suppress Insurrection, to 
punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate the Property of Rebels, and for other 
purposes," approved July 17, 1362, and which act, and the joint resolution explanatory 
thereof, are herewith published, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do 
hereby proclaim to and warn all persons within the contemplation of said sixth section to 
cease participating in, aiding, countenancing, or abetting in the existing rebellion, or any 
rebellion, against the Government of the United States, and to return to their proper alle- 
giance to the United States, on pain of the forfeitures and seizures as within and by said 
sixth section provided. 

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United 
States to be affixed. 

Done at the City of Washington, this 25th day of July, in the year of our Lord One 
[L. S.] Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United 
States the Eighty-seventh. 

By the President— William II. Seward, Secretary of State. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The Sixth Section.— Annexed is the sixth section of the Confiscation act referred to by 
the President in the above proclamation : 

Sec. 6. And he it further enacted. That if any person within any State or Territory of the 
United States, other than those named as aforesaid, after the passage of this act, being 
engaged in armed rebellion against the Government of the United States, or aiding or 
abetting such rebellion, shall not, within sixty days after public warning and proclamation 
duly given and made by the President of the United States, cease to aid, countenance and 
abet such rebellion, and return to his allegiance to the United States, all the estates and 
property, moneys, stocks and credits of such person shall be liable to seizure as aforesaid, and 
it shall be the duty of the President to seize and use them as aforesaid, or the pioceeds 
thereof. And all sales, transfers or conveyances of any such property after the expiration 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 51 

Proclamations of the President of September, 1S62,'-' and January, 

of the said sixty days from the date of such warning and proclamation sliall be null and 
void; and it shall be a sufficient bar to any suit brought by such person for the posseasioa 
or the use of such property, or of any of it, to allege and prove that lie is one of the per- 
sons described in this section. 

* Br THE President op the United States op America. — A Proclamation. Washing- 
ington, Sept. 22, 1862. — I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and 
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that 
hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring 
the constitutional relation between the United States and the people thereof in which States 
that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed ; that it is my purpose, upon the next 
meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering 
pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all the slave States, so-called, the people 
whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then 
have voluntarily adopted or thereafter may voluntarily adopt the immediate or gradual 
abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the efforts to colonize per- 
sons of African descent, with their consent, upon the continent or elsewhere, with the 
previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued ; that op, 
the first day of Ja,nuar>j, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty -three, all 
versons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall he then, thenceforward and for ever free, 
and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval 
authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no 
act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their 
actual freedom; that the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclama- 
tion, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the 
people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United 
States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of 
such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, 
be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof have not been in 
rebellion against the United States. That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress, 
entitled 'An Act to make an additional Article of War,' approved March 13, 1802, and which 
act is in the words and figures following: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following 
shall be promulgated as an additional Aiticle of War for the government of the Army of the 
United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such: Article. — All officers or persons 
in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of 
the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from 
service or labor who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is 
claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court martial of violating 
this article shall be dismissed from the service. Section 2. — A?id be it further enacted. That 
this act shall take effect from and after its passage. Also to the ninth and tenth sections 
of an act entitled "An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to 
seize and Confiscate Property of Rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1S62, 
and which sections are in the words and figures following: Section t). — And be it further 
enacted,, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the 
Government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, 
escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army, and all slaves 
captured by such persons, or deserted by them and coming under the control of the Govern- 
ment of the United States, and all slaves of such persons found on (or being within) any 
])Iace occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, 
shall be deemed captures o^ war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not again 
held as slaves. Section 10. — And be it further enacted. That no slave escaping into any 
State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any of the States, shall be delivered up, 



52 TUE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

1863.* There are some other kindred acts and resolutions of Con- 
gress, but the above are fully sufficient for all purposes of illustra- 
tion. By these it will be seen that assuming their constitutional 
validity the results are as follows : The real and personal property 
of all persons engaged in armed rebellion against the Government, 
or aiding or abetting the rebellion after the 25th of September, 
1862, is liable to seizure and confiscation ; and all sales and trans- 
fers made by such persons after that day are void. 

All persons held as slaves on the 1st day of January, 1863, in the 
States of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, (except fifty-five counties 
designated in the Proclamation of January 1, 1863,) and Louisiana, 
(except thirteen parishes designated in the same Proclamation,) are 
for ever free. 

or in any way impeded or hindered of hisliberty, except for some crime oroffense against the 
laws, unless the person chiiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom 
the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not 
been in arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way giving aid 
and comfort thereto ; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United 
States shall, under any pretense whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of 
any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such jierson to 
the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service. And I do heivby enjoin upon 
and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to 
observe, obey and enforce within their respective spheres of service the act and sections 
above recited. And the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the 
United States wiio shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion shall (upon 
the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States and their respective 
States and people, if the relation shall have been suspended or disturbed,) be compensated 
for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves. In witness whereof 
I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

* Washington, Jan. 1, I860. By the President of the United States of America. — A Proc- 
lamitioit — ^Wliereas, on the Twenty-second day of September, in the year of Our Lord One 
Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty two, a Proclamation was issued by the President of the 
United States containing among other things the following to wit: 

" That on tlie first day of .January, in the'year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hun- 
dred and Sixtv-three, ail persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a 
State, the people whereof sliail then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then 
thenceforth and for kver frke, and the Kxecutive Government of the United States, includ- 
ing the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain t)ie freedom of 
such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any 
effect they may make for their actual freedom. That the Executive will, on the first day of 
January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in 
which the people therein res|)ectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith repre- 
sented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein 
a majority of the qualfied voters of such States shall have participated, shall, in the absence 
of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the 
people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States." Nov7 therefore, I, 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 63 

This is not the time nor the place for the discussion of the ques- 
tion of the constitutional validity of those acts. 

On a former occasion, I endeavored to show that tlie Proclama- 
tion of September, 1862, was a constitutional exercise of Presiden- 
tial power, and that it would legally and constitutionally produce 
its intended effects. Others take the opposite view, and as to the 
constitutional validity of the legislative act just referred to able ar- 
guments have been made on both sides. But those arguments on 
either side are practically unimportant, for they decide nothing. 

But, fortunately for our country, there is a tribunal possessing 
full power to adjudicate these all-important questions authorita- 
tively and conclusively. That tribunal is the Supreme Court of 
the United States; and to its judgments we must all. North and 
South, East and West, bow submissively. It will be the province 
of that august tribunal to pronounce judgment on these momentous 
questions — and to that judgment the fanatical Abolitionist* of the 

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested 
as Commiinder-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed 
rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and 
necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this tirst day of January in the 
year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-three, and in accordance with 
my purpose so to do, publicly proclaim for the full period of one hundred days from the day 
of the first above mentioned order, and designate, as the States and parts of States wherein 
the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the fol- 
lowing, to wit : Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana — except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaque- 
mine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, 
Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin and Orleans, including the city of New-Orleans — Mississippi, 
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia— except the forty-eight counties 
designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, 
Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Ports- 
mouth, and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamatioa 
was not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and 
declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, 
and henceforward shall be free ! and that the E.tecutive Government of the United States, 
including the military and naval authnrities thereof will recognize and maintain the free- 
dom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upoil the people so declared to be free, to abstain 
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense, and I recommend to them that in all 
cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I faithfully declare 
and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed 
service of the United States for garrisoning forts, positions, stations and other places, and to 
man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice, warranted by the Constitution, u[)on military necessity, I invoke the considerate 
judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. In witness whereof I have 
hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be a'fixed. Done at the 
City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of Our Lord One Thousand 
[l. s.] Eight Hundred and Sixty-three, and of the Independence of tlie United States of 
America the Eighty -seventh. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

* By this term I mean those men, who believe and have declared that tlie " Constitution 
is a league with hell and a covenant with the devil," and who would sacrifice the Union, 



54 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

N^ortli cand the fanatical pro-slaverj man of the South will be com- 
pelled to yield implicit, if not cheerful, obedience. I have already 
shown that, contemporaneously with the total annihilation of the 
military power of the States in rebellion, will arise the power peace- 
fully to bring into full effect the Constitution and laws of tlie Union 
through her judicial tribunals. On the arrival of that period, those 
various questions will be presented and, in due and regular course 
and form of law, be conducted to a final decision. If we suppose 
that decision to affimi the constitutional validity of those several 
executive and legislative acts, then indeed existing slavery ceases in 
the rebel States * and sundry losses in other respects fall on indi- 
viduals there. But they and the whole world will know and re- 
member that these consequences, calamitous as the sufferers may 
deem them to be, are the legitimate effects of their attempt to over- 
throw their Government ; they will then learn, as millions before 
them have learned, that the " way of the transgressor is hard," 

rather than not carry into full execution their plan of absolute and universal negro emanci- 
pation. This class is not numerous— indeed, as already stated in the text, it was originally 
and still is ludicrously small. The only /?mrfi(3a7 effect produced by them has been, as I 
have mentioned, the furnishing the rebel conspirators, by means of extracts from " Aboli- 
tion" speeches and publications the means of fiery appeals to the ignorance, prejudice and 
credulity of their people and thus to prepare them for plunging into the rebellion. It may 
be said that this "Abolition" fanaticism is the fanaticism of humanity and philanthropy, 
and that the rebel fanaticism is the fanaticism of barbarism and cruelty ; if this be granted, 
the fact still remains that each fanaticism is equally inimical to the country, and would equally 
rejoice at the downfall of the Constitution, if its ends could not otherwise he attained. 

* Much has been said and written during the last half century as to the barbarizing effects 
of slavery, as it exists and is practised in the rebel States, on the white race born and nur- 
tured under its influence. Tens of thousands among us have listened with incredulity to 
those statements, but the revelations of the war of the rebellion have convinced the most 
sceptical of their truth. Innumerable have been the well-authenticated instances, since the 
commencement of the rebellion, of every refinement of cruelty inflicted on Union citizens 
and soldiers by armed and unarmed rebels. It is due to the truth of history to record a few 
out of the multitudes of these outrages on humanity. Prominent on the list stands the 
" Fort Pillow massacre." As to this, we have the most reliable evidence in the report of the 
Committee of Congress appointed to investigate the matter (Senator Wade and Representa- 
tive Gooch). The re])ort was submitted to Congress on the 5th of May, 1364, and, among 
other things, states : " It appears from the testimony that the atrocities committed at Fort 
Pillow were not the result of passions excited by the heat of conflict, but were the results 
of a policy deliberately decided on and unhesitatingly announced. Here the brutahty and 
cruelty of the rebels were most painfully exhibited. The garrison consisted of 11> officers 
and 538 men, of whom 262 were colored troops, comprising one battalion of the 6th United 
States heavy artillery (formerly called the 1st Alabama artillery), of colored troops, under 
command of Major L. F. Booth ; one section of the 2d United States light artillery, colored, 
and one battalion of the ISth Tennessee cavalry, white, commanded by Major W. F. Brad- 
ford. Major Booth was the ranking ofEcer, and was in command of the post. On Tuesday, 
the 12th of April (the anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861), the pickets 
of the garrison were driven in just about sunrise, that being the first intimation our forces 
there had of any intention on the part of the enemy to attack that place. Fighting soon be- 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 55 

I have said "existing slavery," for no power is found in tlie Con- 
stitution to prevent any State from hereafter arranging its domestic 
institutions as it may see fit ; and consequently there is no power to 
inhibit future slavery in the rebel or in any States. But if all the slaves 
now in those States are legally free by reason of the legislative and ex- 
ecutive acts above mentioned, each of those States is, after the de- 
cision of the Supreme Court to that effect, without aslavic within its 

came general, and about 9 o'clock Major Booth was killed. Major Bradford succeeded to 
the commaud, and withdrew all the forces within the fort. They had previously occupied 
some iiitrenchmeuts at some distance from the fort, and further from the river. This fort 
was situated on a high bluff", which descended precipitately to the river's edge, the side of 
the bluff' on the river's side being covered with trees, bushes, and fallen timber. Extending 
back from the river, on either side of the fort, was a ravine or hollow — the one below the 
fort containing several private stores and some dwellings, constituting what was called the 
town. At the mouth of that ravine, and on the river bank, were some Government build- 
ings, containing commissary and quartermaster's stores. The ravine above the fort was 
known as Cold Creek ravine, the sides being covered with trees and bushes. To the right, 
or below and a little to the front of the fort, was a level piece of ground, not quite so ele- 
vated as the fort itself, on which had been erected some log huts or shanties, which were 
occupied by the white troops, and also used for hospital and other purposes. Within the 
fort, tents had been erected, with board floors, for the use of the colored troops. There were 
six pieces of artillery in the fort, consisting of two 6-pounder howitzers, and two 10-pounder 
Parrots. The rebels continued their attack, but up to two or three o'clock in the afternoon, 
they had not gained any decisive success. Our troops, both white and black, fought most 
bravely, and were in good spirits. The gunboat No. 7 (New Era), Captain Marshall, took 
part in the conflict, shelling the enemy as opportunity offered. Signals had been agreed 
upon by which the officers in the fort could indicate where the guns of the boat could be 
most effective. There being but one gunboat there, no permanent impression appears to 
have been produced upon the enemy ; for, as they were shelled out of one ravine, they 
would make their appearance in the other. They would thus appear and retire as the guu- 
boat moved from one point to the other. About one o'clock the fire on both sides slackened 
somewhat, and the gunboat moved out in the river, to cool and clean its guns, having fired 
282 rounds of shell, shrapnel and canister, which nearly exhausted its supply of ammuni- 
tion. The rebels having thus far failed in their attack, now resorted to their customary 
use of flags of truce. The first flag of truce conveyed a demand from Forrest for the uncon- 
ditional surrender of the fort. To this Major Bradford replied, asking to be allowed one 
hour to consult with his officers and the officers of the gunboat. In a short time a second 
flag of truce appeared, with a communication from Forrest, that he would allow Major 
Bradford twenty minutes in which to move his troops out of the fort, and if it was not done 
within that time an assault would be ordered. To this Major Bradford returned the reply 
that he would not surrender. During the time these flags of truce were flving, the rebels 
were moving down the ravine and taking positions from which the more readily to charge 
upon the fort. Parties of them were also engaged in plundering the Government buildings 
of commissary and quartermaster's stores, in full view of the gunboat. Captain Marshall 
states that he refrained from firing upon the rebels, although they were thus violating the 
flag of truce, for fear that, should they finally succeed in capturing the fort, they would 
justify any atrocities they might commit by saying that they were in retaliation for his 
firing while the flag of truce was flying. He says, however, that when he saw the rebels 
coming down the ravine above the fort, and taking positions there, he got under way and 
stood for the fort, determined to use what little ammunition he had left in shelling them 
out of the ravine ; but he did not get up within effective range before the final assault was 
made. Immediately after the second flag of truce retired, the rebels made a rush from the 
positions they had so treacherously gained and obtained possession of the fort, raising the 



56 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

borders. In that state of things the uitensest eneni j of shivery wonld 
feel no anxiet}' for the future, for he vrould know that by no act of leg- 
islation of any State could those, who had become free, be again 
reduced to slavery ; and he would also know, that in order to tlie 
re-introduction of slavery in any State, legislative acts for that pur- 
pose must be enacted. The enactment of such acts would be most 
improbably in view of the present state of opinion throughout the 

cry of ' No quarter !' But little opportunity was allowed for our resistance. Our troops, black 
and white, threw down their arms, and sought to escape by running down the steep bluff 
near the fort, and secreting themselves behind trees and logs, in the busiies, and under the 
brush— some even jumping intQ the river, leavinj^ only their heads above the water, as 
they crouched down under the bank. Then followed a scene of cruelty and murder without 
a parallel in civilized warfare, which needed but the tomaliawk and scalping-knife to exceed 
the worst atrocities ever committed by savages. The rebels commenced an indiscrimiuate 
slaughter, sparing neither age nor sex, white or black, soldier or civilian. The officers and 
men seemed to vie with each other in the devilish work; men, women, and even children, 
wherever found, were deliberately shot down, beaten, and hacked with sabres ; some of the 
children not more than ten years old were forced to stand up and face their murderers 
while being shot; the sick and the wounded were butchered without mercy, the rebels 
even entering the hospital building and dragging them out to be shot, or killing them as 
they lay there unable to offer the least resistance. All over the hillside the work of mur- 
der was going on ; numbers of our men were collected together in lines or groups and delib- 
erately shot; some were shot while in the river, while others on the bank were shot and 
their bodies kicked into the water, many of them still living but unable to make any exer- 
tion to save themselves from drowning. Some of the rebels stood on the top of the hill or 
a short distance down its side, and called to our soldiers to come up to them, and as they 
approached, shot them down in cold blood ; if their guns or pistols missed fire, fo'-cing 
them to stand there until they were again prepared to fire. All around were heard cries 
of 'No quarter!' 'No quarter!' 'Kill the damned niggers; shoot them down!' All 
who aslced for mercy were answered by the most cruel taunts and sneers. Some were 
spared for a time only to be murdered under circumstances of greater cruelty. No cruelty 
which the most fiendish Hialignity could devise was omitted by these murderers. One 
white soldier who was wounded in one leg so as to be unable to walk, was ir.ade to stand 
up while his tormentors shot him; others who were wounded and unable to stand were 
held up and again shot. One negro who had been ordered by a rebel officer to hold his 
horse, was killed by him when he remounted ; another, a mere child, whom an officer had 
taken up behind him on his horse, was seen by Chalmers, who at once ordered the officer to 
put him down and shoot him, which was done. The huts and tents in which many of the 
wounded had taken shelter were set on fire, both that night and the next morning, while 
the wounded were stdl in them -those only escaping who were able to get themselves out, 
or who could prevail on others less injured than themselves to help them out; and even 
some of those thus seeking to escape the flames were met by those ruffians and brutally 
shot down, or had their brains beaten out. One man was deliberately fastened down to the 
floor of a tent, face upvvards, by means of nails driven through his clothing and into the 
boards under him, so that he could not possibly escape, and then the tent set on fire; an- 
other was nailed to a building outside of the fort, and then the building set on fire and 
burned. The charred remains of five or six bodies were afterwards f lund, all but one so 
much diifigured and consumed by the flames that they could not be identified, and the iden- 
tification of that one is not absolutely certain, although there can hardly be a doubt that it 
was the body of Lieutenant Akerstroin, Q\iartermaster of the 13th Tennessee cavalry, and a 
native Tennesseean ; several witnesses who saw the remains, and who were personally 
acquainted with him while living, have testified that it is their firm b.'li.'f that it was his 
buflv that was thus treated. These deeds of murder and cruelty ceased when night came 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 57 

world ; in view of the effect of the war on the slaves themselves as 
before mentioned ; in view of the fact that the slave trade is piracy; 
and of the farther fact, that at the period in question the only slaves 
in our country would be the comparatively few remaining in the 
border slave States, and in the excepted counties and parishes above 
mentioned. Under such circumstances, the passage of an act re- 
establishing slavery would be a purely idle ceremony. Thus it 
is seen that such a decision on this point would in no manner 
infringe on State rights and privileges present or prospective. On 
the other hand, let us suppose that the decision of the Supreme ju- 
dicial tribunal of the Union is adverse to the validity of the acts in 

on, only to be renewed the next morning, when the demons carefully sought among the 
dead lying about in all directions for any of the wounded yet alire, and- those they found 
were deliberately shot. Scores of the dead and wounded were found there the day after the 
massacre by the men from some of our gunboats who were permitted to eo on shore and 
collect the wounded and bury the dead. The rebels themselves had made a pretense of 
burying a great many of their victims, but they had merely thrown them, without the least 
regard to care or decency, into the trenches and ditches about the fort, or the little hollows 
and ravines on the hillside, covering them but partially with earth. Portions of heads and 
faces, hands and feet, were found protruding through the earth in every direction. The 
testimony also establishes the fact that the rebels buried some of the living with the dead, a 
few of whom succeeded afterwards in digging themselves out, or were dug out by others, 
one of whom your committee found in Mound City hospital, and there examined. And 
even when your committee visited the spot, two weeks afterwards, although parties of men 
had been sent on shore from time to time to bury the bodies unburied and re-bury the 
others, and were even then engaged in the same work, we found the evidences of this mur- 
der and cruelty still more painfully apparent ; we saw bodies still unburied (at some dis- 
tance from the fort) of some sick men who had been met fleeing from the hospital and 
beaten down and brutally murdered, and their bodies left where they had fallen. We could 
still see the faces, hands, and feet of men, white and black, protruding out of the ground, 
whose graves had not been reached by those engaged in re-interring the victims of the 
massacre ; and although a great deal of rain had fallen within the preceding two weeks, 
the ground, more especially on the side and at the foot of the bluff where the most of the 
murders had been committed, was still discolored by the blood of our brave but unfortunate 
men, and the loirs and trees showed but too plainly the evidencts of the atrocities perpe- 
trated there. Many other instances of equally atrocious cruelty might be enumerated, but 
your committee feel compelled to refrain from giving here more of the heart-sickening de- 
tails, and refer to the statements contained in the voluminous testimony herewith sub- 
mitted. Those statements were obtained by them from eye-witnesses and sufferers ; many 
of them, as they were examined by your committee, were lying upon beds of sufifering, 
some so feeble that their lips could with difficulty frame the words bj' which they en- 
deavored to convey some idea of the cruelties which had been inflicted on them, and which 
they had seen inflicted on others. How many of our troops thus fell victims to the malig- 
nity and barbarity of Forrest and his followers cannot yet be definitely ascertained. Two 
officers belonging to the garrison were absent at the time of the capture and massacre. Of 
the remaining officers but two are known to be living, and they are wounded and now in 
the hospital at Mound City. One of them. Captain Potter, may even now be dead, as the 
surgeons, when your committee were there, expressed no hope of his recovery. Of the 
men, from SCO to 400 aie known to have been killed at Fort Pillovi', of whom, at least, 300 
were murdered in cold blood after the post was in possession of the rebels, and our men 
had thrown down their arms and ceased to ofier resistance. Of the survivors, except the 



58 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

question and cojisequently that they produce none of their intended 
effects. In that event, the zealous anti-sLavery man must content 
liimself with the hope tliat, thougli the institution he so cordially 
hates has not been destroj^ed by law, but still in a legal sense ex- 
ists, yet that the war of the rebellion has in reality given it its 
death-blow, and that after a few years of lingering it will disappear 
for ever. But whether the pro-slavery man on the one side, or the 
anti-slavery man on the other, is satisfied with the irreversible judg- 
ment of that tribunal is of no moment; the patriot, in whatever 
section of the land he may be found, rejoices that the Constitution 
lias been preserved, and that its foundations, instead of having been 
shaken by rebels on the one side or "Abolitionists " on the other, 
are firmer and stronger than ever. 

wounded in the hospital at Mound City, and the few who succeeded in making their escape 
unhurt, nothing definite is known ; and it is to be feared that many have been murdered 
after being taken away from the fort. In reference to the fate of Major Bradford, who was 
in command of the fort when it was captured, and who had up to that time received no 
injury, there seems to be no doubt. The general understanding everywhere seemed to be 
that he had been brutally murdered the day after he was taken prisoner. There is some 
discrepancy in the testimony, but your committee do not see how the one who professed to 
have been an eye-witness of his death could have been mistaken. There may be some 
uncertainty in regard to his fate. When your committee arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, 
they found and examined a man (Mr. McLagan,) who had been conscripted by some of 
Forrest's forces, but who, with other conscripts, had succeeded in making his escape. He 
testifies that while two companies of rebel troops, with Major Bradford and many other 
prisoners, were on their march from Brownsville to Jackson, Tennessee, Major Bradford 
was taken by five rebels— one an otficer— led about fifty yards from the line of march, and 
deliberately murdered in view of all there assembled. He fell— killed instantly by three 
musket balls, even while asking that his life might be spared, as he had fought them man- 
fully, and was deserving of a better fate. The motive for the murder of Major Bradford 
seems to have been the simple fact that, although a native of the South, he remained loyal 
to his Government. The testimony herewith submitted contains many statements made 
by the rebels, that they did not intend to treat ' home-made Yankees,' as they termed loyal 
Southerners, any better than negro troops." Such horrors scarcely find a parallel in the 
dreadful atrocities of the Sepoys of India in their late rebellion against the British Gov- 
ernment. 

The treatment of Union prisoners in the dungeons of Richmond is universally known to 
have been and still to be cruel and inhuman to a degree unparalleled. Instances almost 
innumerable could be stated. I will confine myself to an official letter from Gov. Brongh, 

of Ohio: 

The State of Ohio, Executive Depaktmext, Columbus, May 3, 1864.— Sir- 1 have your 
favor of the 19th inst. All prisoners of war, civil and military, are under the sole charge 
of Col. Wm. Hoffman, Commissary General of prisoners, Washington City. I cannot inter- 
fere with them if I would, and I cannot give an order to see or communicate with tliem, 
without his permission. I am glad it is so. Some four weeks ago I saw at Baltimore the 
arrival of a vessel loaded with our prisoners from Belle Isle, who, in the very refinement of 
barbarism, had been reduced bv starvation to mere skeletons, for no other purpose than to 
incapacitate them for service in the Union armies. Over one-third of these men were too 
far gone to be resuscitated, and died within forty-eight hours after their arrival. While I 
would not retaliate on rebel prisoners by practising like means, I confess, General, I have 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 59 

Thus, while no plan of restoration, which implies a territorial 
condition on the part of the rebel States or which requires or justi- 
fies any interference in the local aifairs or local governments of 
those States as States, is demanded by necessity, so no such plan 
can receive the sanction of any, who adhere to the fundamental, 
and the only true and safe principle, namely, that at all hazards 
and in all events, the Constitution must be preserved inviolate. On 
the ground now stated, the "straitest sect'' of strict construction- 
very little sympathy with or desire to parole or release from confinement men who have 
been upholding a rebellion that has deluged the land with sorrow and blood, and whose 
leaders have resorted to cruelty and barbarism in the treatment of prisoners more infernal 
than ever practised by savages. The higher the rank and social position of men, the 
less are they entitled to sympathy. They sinned against light and knowledge. Therefore, 
I am glad their fate is not in my keeping, lest under such provocation I should not be over 
merciful. JOHN BROUGH." 

I select from the hundreds of similar published statements the following, because I know 
the winter and can vouch for his truth and integrity ; " I was living in the north part of 
Texas when the rebellion broke out, and, with my loyal friends, did all in my power to 
oppose it. For this we were often threatened to be hung. In the Summer of 1860 many 
towns were destroyed by fire in Texas, supposed to be the work of Abolition incendiaries. 
But after the war broke out it was ascertained for a fact that the towns burned were set on 
fire by some of the ringleaders of the rebel party for the purpose of exciting the people 
against the North and uniting them in the rebellion. In 1862 Arkansas and Texas were 
declared under martial law ; and woe to the loyal people, for now their troubles had just 
begun ! Any man accused of disloyalty to the confederacy would be arrested and tried 
before the Provost Marshal and hung, in many cases, in less than six hours from the time of 
their arrest! In the month of October, 1862, over one hundred of my loyal friends suflered 
in this way. Twenty-two were Tiuiuj at the same time, one morning before break/ant, ivltkout 
the least shadow of a trial, by order of James Young, a captain in the rebel army. Several 
of the loyal men attempted to escape to the Federal lines. Some succeeded, but many were 
captured and shot down or hung like dogs. I was followed for three hundred and fifty 
miles, and after many hair-breadth escapes, succeeded in passing nearly all the rebel pickets 
in the north part of Arkansas, when I was arrested by the rebel soldiers on suspicion of 
attempting to escape to the ' enemy's country,' (as they termed it,) and sent to Little Rock 
under a strong guard, and confined in an iron cage twelve feel square, inside of a filthy and I 
sickly prison; but I was not alone. Several other Union men were there before me, part of 
whom were taken out and executed. Others died of diseases contracted in prison ; and 
others were taken out and forced into the rebel army ; and still others were suffered to 
remain there without any trial or investigation, kept in bitter suspense, not knowing what 
hour a guard might call for some of us to accompany them to the suburbs of the city where 
many a loyal man has been sent to his 'long home.' Wives of loyal men who had been 
arrested on suspicion and torn from their families, would come to Little Rock and visit the 
prison in search of their husbands, and in many cases find that they had been either exe- 
cuted or died in prison I Such agony and groans as I have witnessed from these heart-broken 
widows are enough to freeze the blood in one's veins ! A true history of the rebellion in 
the South is one of blood, barbarism and savage ferocity, which perhaps can never be 
written. FRED. W. SUMNER." 

In all the European wars of the last one hundred years, in our wars of the Revolution 
and of 1812, in our war with Mexico, no such acts of cruelty and barbarity occurred. I do 
not make the foregoing extracts to excite bitterness of feeling or to arouse indign.ation— but 
merely to suggest that the full of the institution of slavery, if such is to be its fate, will not 



60 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

ists of the Constitution and of liberal constructionists of State rights 
can stand in common with him who has the most latitudinarian 
views of the Constitution and the most narrow idea of State power 
and sovereignty; for they will all agree as on axiomatic truths, 
that tlie Constitution must in no m-anner be violated; that the Con- 
stitution and all legislative and executive acts in harmony with it 
are the supreme law of the land ; that the Supreme Court of the 
United States is invested with the power to pass authoritatively and 
conclusively on the questions now under consideration. 

It cannot, I think, be doubted that the great body of the people 
of the States not in rebellion are earnestly and intelligently attached 
to our institutions, and would on no condition assent to their down- 
fall.* Those of native descent revere and honor the memory of 
their fathers ; they cling with heartfelt affection to their traditions, 
and they will never knowingly connive at or participate in the de- 
struction of the great and sacred work commenced by them by the 
Revolution and consummated by the Constitution. They in their 
heart of hearts love and cherish that work. Citizens of foreign 
birth have, if possible, more imperative and resistless reasons for 
cherishing those institutions and preserving them for ever inviolate ; 
for in them they have found a safe and happy refuge from the tyr- 
anny of other lands, from the depressing influences of aristocratic 
systems, the social depression of " class" and " caste," from grind- 
ing poverty and practical slavery. They will never understand- 
ingly assent to their annihilation. 

cause tears of regret to flow any where, if indeed this conduct of the people and the soldiers 
of the rebel States can be accounted for on no principle or theory except the necessary 
influence of their social system on the hearts and dispositions of their popuhition. Prob- 
ably an additional explanation of the enigma may be found, as some one has suggested, in 
the idea that it is the legitimate and necessary fruit of the radical and desperate wickedness 
of the cause in which they are engaged. 

* I have said that it was the firm resolve of the great bulk of our people to crush the 
rebellion. The considerations already stated would seem conclusive on this subject, but it 
would be gross injustice to my countrymen, to omit to mention the constant and the costly 
ofl^eriniis they have indiuidwiUij made and are still making in this cause. The records of all 
history furnish no more illustrious exampless of patriotic devotion and of real philan- 
thropy, of unselfish benevolence and genuine humanity. To say nothing of the vast expen- 
ditures of the Government as such, let ua look at the offerings of our citizens individually 
and in States, counties, towns, cities and neighborhoods. 

It is stated on competent authority, {•'■ Philanthropic Results of the War in Aimrica^' 
Sheldon & Co., New York,) that up to February, 18ri4, these contributions were as follows : 

(1.) Expended by the States for the equipment and maintenance of troops, not reimbursed 
or promised to be reimbursed by the General Government, ^10,937,323. 

(2.) Bounties, extra pay, and allowances to families of Volunteers (by State,) $47,585,- 
500. 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 61 

How is it, then, that so many among us, both native and natu- 
ralized, are found in apparent sympathy with the rebellion ; or, if 
not in sympathy with it, indifferent apparently to its result? The 
vast majority of the persons now alluded to would be shocked to 
believe that they were not the country's real friends and support- 
ers ; to such the terms " disloyal," " traitor," do not apply and 
their indiscriminate use is equally unjustified by fact and repug- 
nant to policy and good sense. Some few among us are undoubt- 
edly disloyal and desire the success of the rebellion, while with 
mean hypocrisy and cowardice they profess patriotism ; but such 
anomalies are, gratefully be it said, not numerous. I cannot waste 
time on them. Now and then one is found (as I have incidentally 
mentioned,) who is really honest, because he candidly admits that 
he considers man incapable of self-government and therefore 
prefers a monarchy or oligarchy to a Republic. The number of 
those is but as a drop in our great ocean. Why, then, I ask again, 
is it that there are many who, though they do not in reality sym- 
pathize with the rebellion, yet in their expressions of opinion and 
in their actions, give hope and encouragement to the rebels and 
impede in a greater or less degree the efforts for their overthrow ? 
This question admits, I think, of but one answer ; from the very na- 
ture of the case there can be but one explanation, and that is, that 
those persons do not understand, or fail to remember, that the re- 

(3.) By cities, towns, corporations and individuals for raising and recruiting regiments, 
aside from bounties and relief to families, $34,230,000. 

(4.) By couuties, towns, cities, corporations and individuals, for bounties and aid to 
families of Volunteers, §79,595,743. 

(5.) By State, contribution for sick and wounded soldiers, in different forms, $S16,041. 

(6.) By State, contributions for National defensfe, not included under any of the fore- 
going heads, $13,040,000. 

(7.) By individuals, contributions for the general purposes of National defense, not 
cmtmerated above, $1,005,000. 

(8.) By associations and individuals, contributions for the care and support of soldiers, 
whether in camp or sick and wounded and for their families, $24,044,865. 

(9.) By associations aad individuals, contributions for freedmen and white Union 
refugees, $532,144. 

The details are all given in the work referred to. 

The contribution noticed above include in part those made up to the 1st of February last, 
through those magnificent monuments of a " Christian" age, the United States Sanitary 
Commission and the United States Christian Commission. The receipts of the former up 
to the 1st of July, 1S64, in money and property were about $15,00u,000, and of the latter 
$2,500,000. Whatever of military renown or prestige the American people may have 
acquired by this war, the philanthropist will consider all that eclipsed by these extraordi- 
nary manifestations of charity and benevolence. 

In view of all the facts stated in this note, may it not well be said that a people, capable 
of such works, are incapable of surrendering to treason, and rebellion ! ! 



62 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

bellion was wholly and absolutely causeless, as the facts incontro- 
vertibly show ; they do not know or they fail to appreciate its true 
and real causes and origin, the secret motives which influenced its 
originators and their intentions and designs, as to which there is no 
room for doubt, if we look at the irrefragable testimony already ad- 
duced ; and above all, they are wholly blind to the inevitably fatal 
results of the rebellion (if successful,) to our national existence and 
to the cause of " civil liberty" and " free institutions" now and for 
ever. Those results I have candidly and truly stated. It is neces- 
sarily impossible *for any man (whatever may be his intellectual 
ability^ to think, or reason, or write correctly on this momentous 
Bubject unless he understands, realizes and appreciates the facts 
just adverted to. With that pre-rcquisite, however severely he may 
condemn various acts of the Administration, civil and military, 
and however strongly he may express that condemnation, he will 
not endanger the great cause by giving " aid and comfort" to the 
rebellion. Without it, he becomes, imperceptibly to himself prac- 
tically an enemy of the Union and a friend of the rebellion.* 



VII. 

In view of existing facts already stated, the inevitable conclu- 
sion is, that the rebellion will he crushed and that our country will 
be saved. When that blessed event shall happen, when it is pro- 
claimed that the war of the rebellion is ended and that our coun- 
try throughout all its borders is again under the beneficent domin- 
ion of the Constitution and the laws, what will then be the condition 
of tlie United States and what the future before them ? 

We shall have triumphantly passed through a war of more gigan- 
tic proportions than any that has preceded it, considering the mul- 
titudes of men on either side that have been engaged and have 

* This trutli is mournfully illustrated in a late publication entitled " The Future." Its 
author is an intelligent and respectable gentleman and believes himself patriotic. His 
case is the more singular from the fact that the rebellion has taken the life of his near and 
cherished relative, a youthful hero who fell nobly fighting for the Republic in the second 
year of the rebellion. Yet the whole animus of this publication is inimical to his country 
and sympathetic with her enemies and is well calculated to give them " comfort" and en- 
couragement. If they succeed they will not forget i/i« /ayw received at his hands. Let the 
mantle of charity be cast over him; and let us hope, when the not distant hour arrives which 
shall witness our triumph over treason and rebellion, that_ his countrymen amid their 
rejoicings will forgive the grievous wrongs he and others like him have done, "for they 
know not what thev do." 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 63 

fallen in it, the number of truly great battles that have been fought, 
the thousands of millions of treasure that have been required to 
nuiintaln and conduct it. We shall have brought this rniglity strug- 
gle to a successful and a glorious end! We shall have exhibited to 
the world innumerable instances of individual patriotic sacrifice 
and of sublime heroism. We shall have furnished to history its 
most beautiful page in the relation she will give of the philan- 
thropy and benevolence of our citizens.* We shall have proved 
to all nations that we are a people of unsurpassed, I do not say un- 
equaled, moral and physical courage, and that we are the worthy 
inheritors of the priceless institutions transmitted to us by our 
fathers; and above all, we shall have demonstrated the great truth 
— that man is capable of self-government. 

Some apprehend that the close of the war of the rebellion will 
find us encumbered with a debt, under which we must struafiirle and 
fall. But a few plain facts will show how wholly unfounded is this 
apprehension. I advance no fanciful nor exaggerated proposition 
when I say, that no country in Christendom possesses the material 
means that by the favor of God belong to us, and no country is 
more able to bear the burden that is thus devolved upon us. And 
yet one country certainly (Great Britain, if not others,) has for a long 
time readily sustained and now sustains an equal burden. We can 
and we shall sustain it. Few even among us, and fewer abroad, 
are aware of the extent of our resources. Let us consider these for 
a moment. 

(1.) Oar population in 1860 was 31,44:5,080. The. increase in 
every decade since 1790, has been nearly thirty-five per cent. The 
Superintendent of the Census (Mr. Kennedy), in his compend, pub- 
lished in 1862, estimates the population in 1870 at ■42, 318,132 ; and 
in 1880, at 56,450,241 ; and if this rate of increase continues, we 
shall number in sixty years from tliis day, over 200,000,000. 

(2.) We have derived, and shall continue to derive from im,mi- 
gration an immense annual addition to our physical power and. 
financial resources. Mr. Kennedy, in his preliminary report to the 
census of 1860, states the whole number of emigrants to this coun- 
try from 1820 to 1860 at five and one half millions. JSTotwithstandins: 
the war of the rebellion, no stop has been put to immigration ; on the 
contrary, the arrivals during the past year show a large increase ; 

* A preceding note shows the munificence of the patriotic and benevolent offerings 
which have been made. The Sanitary and the Christian Commission, are the " glory" of 
the age, the "shining hghts" of the Nineteenth Century. 



64 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

and the American Consul at Liverpool, in a letter of the 22d of 
April last, to our Secretary of State, says, that the immigration at 
this time from that port to the United States is unprecedented ; that 
there are not half ships enough to carry the emigrants waiting for 
a passage, and that he was informed by one firm in that city, that 
they alone could send to us within two months, 50,000 persons if 
they had ships to convey them. That this immigration will be enor- 
mously increased, on the suppression of the . rebellion, cannot be 
doubted. Not to speak of the numerical addition thus made to our 
population, the addition by this means to the wealth and financial 
ability of the nation is correspondently great. The reports of the 
Emigrant Commissioners of the State of New York show that the 
average amount of money brought by immigrants, in addition to their 
personal effects, contributed sensibly to the extraordinary rapid in- 
crease of our personal property, as exhibited by successive censuses. 
Besides, every man contributes by his productive Uibor to our na- 
tional wealth, and he contributes to the national treasury in the 
way of taxation and per centage on the food he eats, the clothes he 
wears, and the luxuries, if any, he enjoys. It is a low estimate to 
assume that each man adds $100 per year to the national wealtli, 
and $10 a year to the national treasury. We have, then, in immi- 
gration a perennial, essential increase of ability to bear our pecu- 
niary burdens. 

(3.) The official valuation of the property of our country in 1860 
was $16,159,016,068 ; or deducting the value of slaves, $1-1,223,618,- 
068, being an increase over the valuation of 1850 of more than 
$8,000,000,000 (eight billions). Thus, the increase of property in 
this decade was 130 percent., while that of population but little ex- 
ceeds 35 per cent. The valuation at this time would greatly exceed 
that of four years ago. 

(4.) The United States embrace a territorial area of 2,936,166 
square miles, or 1,879,146,240 acres,[of which in May, 1863, there 
remained undisposed of and belonging to the Government of the 
United States, 964,901,625 acres,]extendlng from the 24th to the 
49th degrees of north latitude, and from the 67th to the 125th of west 
longitude and lying between the two great oceans of the world, it 
embraces every variety of climate and of soil and is capable of 
every variety of production.* Of the immense quantity of land of 

* •' The area of all the valleys which are drained by the rivers of Europe which empty 
into the Atlantic, all the valleys which are drained by the rivers of Asia which empty into 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 65 

which the Government still remains the owner, the very large pro- 
portion is capable of cultivation. 

(5.) Our agricultural productions are on a corresponding scale. In 
the eight interior States extending from the Western bounds of 
Pennsylvania and ]^ew York to the Missouri River, and from the 
Ohio Kiver north to the British dominions, the sereal productions 
in 1860 were 588,160,323 bushels, exceeding the whole annual 
product of England, and about equal to that of France. The cattle 
numbered 7,204,810; the swine, 11,039,352; these, it will be 
remembered, are the products of only eight of our States. The 
number of barrels of wheat and flour carried on the Erie 'Canal to 
the Hudson River in 1862 was 7,516,397. 

(6.) Our mineral productions are inestimable in value and exhaust- 
less in quantity. Our coal is stated by Sir William Armstrong, 
to be thirty-two times as great in quantity as that of the United 
Kingdoin ; and our iron bears a similar proportion. The Commis- 
sioner of the General Land Office in his ofiicial rej^ort of December 
29, 1862, says : 

" The great auriferous region of the United States, in the western portion of 
the continent stretches from the 49th degree of north latitude and Puget 
Sound, to the 30° 30" parallel, and from the 102d degree of longitude west of 
Greenwich to the Pacific ocean, embracing jjortions of Dakota, Nebraska, Col- 
orado, all of New Mexico, with Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon and 
Washington Territories. It may be designated as comprising 17 degrees of 
latitude, or a breadth of eleven hundred miles, from north to south, and of 
nearly equal longitudinal extension, making an area of more than a million 
of square miles. 

" This vast region is traversed from north to south, first, on the Pacific side, 
by the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains, then by the Blue and Humboldt; 
on the east, by the double ranges of the Rocky Mountains, embracing the 
Wasatch and Wind Pdver Chain, and the Sierra Madre, stretching longitu- 
dinally and in lateral spurs, crossed and linked together by intervening ridges, 
connecting the whole system by five principal ranges, dividing the country 
into an equal number of basins, each being nearly surrounded by mountains, 
and watered by mountain streams and snows, thereby intersjjersing this immense 
territory with bodies of agricultural lands, equal to the support, not only of 
miners, but of a dense population. 

" These mountains, are literally stocked with minerals ; gold and silver 
being interspersed in profusion over this immense surface, and daily brought 
to light by new discoveries. In addition to the deposits of gold and silver, 

the Indian Ocean, and of all the valleys which are drained by the rivers of Africa and Eu- 
rope which empty into the Mediterranean, does not cover an extent of territory as great as 
that included in the valleys drained by the American rivers aloue which discharge them- 
selves into one central sea — the Gulf of Mexico." 



66 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

various sections of the whole region are rich in precious stones, marble, 
gypsum, salt, tin, quicksilver, asphaltum, coal, iron, copper, lead, mineral and 
medicinal, thermal and cold springs and streams. 

" The yield of the precious metals alone of this region "will not fall below one 
hundred millions of dollars the present year, and it will augment with the 
increase of population, for centuries to come. Within ten years the annual 
product of these mines will reach two hundred millions of dollars in the 
precious metals, and in coal, iron, tin, lead, quicksilver and copper, half that 
sum. (He proposes to subject these minerals to a Government tax of eight 
per cent., and counts upon a revenue from this source of twenty-five millions 
per annum, almost immediately, and upon a proportionate increase in the future. 
With an amoiuit of labor relatively equal to that expended in California,) 
applied to the gold fields already known to exist outside of that State, the 
production of this year, including that of California, would exceed four 
hundred millions. In a word, tlie value of these mines is absolutely 
incalculable." 

The copper mines of Lake Superior, the lead and iron mines of 
Missouri, and the mineral productions of various other States, includ- 
ing the exhaustless salt sjjrings in various parts of our country, are 
sources of incalculable wealth. 'No people on the globe possesses to 
a similar extent, these great sources of wealth and of revenue. 

(7.) Our coast and shore line, according to Professor Bache, is in 
all 122,784: miles. No nation, not even all the nations of Europe 
combined, has such facilities for cheap water communication. Our 
commercial tonnage in the year 1860 was 5,358,808 tons, and our 
commercial fleets on oceans, lakes and rivers numbered nearly 
30,000 vessels ; the increase in the decade from 1850 to 1860 was 
over 50 per cent. ; and though the war of the rebellion has tempo- 
rarily retarded the progress of this branch of industry, the termi- 
nation of that war will at once witness its restoration to more than 
its wonted prosperity. 

(8.) Onr manufactories and mechanical branches of industry are 
on an equally extensive scale with the commercial and agricultural, 
and are equally reliable sources of wealth to our people and of 
revenue to our Government. According to reliable statements, the 
value of our manufactured articles in 1860 exceeded $1,500,000,000.* 

It is thus manifest that we are abundantly able to bear the 
burden of our national war debt, assuming it to amount even to 

* I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness for this valuable information, as to 
the power and resources of our country, to the report made on the 11th of September, 1863, 
to the " International Statistical Congress" at Berlin, by Samuel B. Kuggles, the delegate 
to that body from the United States. This report is an honor to iis author and to our 
country. Much interesting information on this subject is also contained in a report made 



THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 67 

$4,000,000,000 ; that we can with honorable punctuality, without 
inipoverishinent or distress, pay the interest and can., when necessary, 
pay the principal. It ought however to he mentioned that, if we 
are to judge by the experience of England, our public creditors, 
domestic or foreign, instead of requiring pa3'ment of the principal, 
would regard it as a serious niisfurtune to be compelled to receive 
it, so long as they had implicit conlideuce in the payment of the 
interest. 

Such being our aljility, sliall we faljill our solemn obligations ? 
Patriotism, honor, morality, duty, love of republican liberty, " a 
decent respect for the opinions of mankind," the very instincts of 
national preservation unitedly and loudly answer. Yes ! This debt 
will have been contracted for a sacred purpose, namely, the salvation 
of the national life; it will subserve the best and most glorious of ends, 
namely, the preservation of our thrice blessed Government and 
Union and their transmission to posterity and the consequent 
demonstration to the world of the stability and permanence, as well 
as of the beauty and beneficence, of our political institutions. No 
patriotic man will, no well informed man has a right to, doubt that 
the people of the " Great Republic" will bear this burden with 
manly and cheerful firmness. It is a duty we owe to the memory 
of those who prepared for us our heritage of civil and religious 
freedom. It is a still more sacred and imperative duty to the tens 
of thousands of ])atriot heroes who have ofiered up their lives for 
us in this contest ; their costly ofi'erings will have been wholly in 
vain, if we, who survive and for whom the sacrifice was made, shall 
prove recreant to our duty and thus render unavailing the noble 
work they have, with such sublime self-devotion, performed for us. 
I say " render unavailing," for the disregard of our national obli- 
gations, by the repudiation of our national debt, would, of necessity 
involve the dissolution of our Government and the end of our 
national career. No nation would, no nation should, be permitted 
to exist under such a load of dishonor and of infamy; and that 
dishonor and that infamy voluntarily assumed, imposed by no 
necessity and admitting of no justification or even extenuation. 
The repudiation of that debt, or what is equivalent, the failure to 

on the 12th of May, 1864, to the Union League Club of the City of New York, by a Com- 
mittee on "Emigration." The report has been published. No intelligent American can 
rise from the perusal of the documents mentioned in this note, without the cheering con- 
viction of the perfect ability of his country to pay the whole debt she may incur in sup- 
pressing the rebellion. 



68 THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 

pay annually its interest, and ultimately its principal, would be 
deliberate national suicide. 

Is this people prepared for that? Is it prepared to make itself 
the scorn of the world, the jest and the jeer of tyrants and of 
despots, an object of contempt and loathing to patriots in every 
land ; to become the base betrayers of the great trust conniiitted to 
them by the Almighty, heartless ingrates to the men of the Revolu- 
tion who established, and to the men of this war who saved, the 
Republic ! ! And all this, too, for considerations merely mercenary. 
It cannot be believed that the " American people" will ever be 
guilty of an infamy whose ])arallel could nowhere be found ; nor 
is it to be believed, that the revolutionary and fatal sentiments on 
this subject, put forth in the publication whose title is mentioned in 
a preceding note, will be received other than with stern reproba- 
tion by all who desire the preservation of the Union. This unspeaka- 
ble calamity of repudiation may befall us, but iiever till the peo[)lo 
of the United States are ready to sacrifice concurrently the Consti- 
tution and the Union; to declare that they no longer desire Repub- 
lican Government and are willing to encounter the terrors of 
anarchy or of despotism ! These results would be inevitable concom- 
itants. Then indeed would be chanted the death song of civil 
libert}', and then would come the triumph of tyrants and oppressors 
throughout the world. 

Bui I see in the future no such appalling spectacle. On the con- 
trary, I look forward with unwavering confidence to the fidelity of 
this people to the Constitution and the Union, to their performance, 
as citizens of the Republic, of all things requisite to its preserva- 
tion. Deeply imbued with this conviction, I cannot but see a 
splendid future for my country, a future filled with glor}'' and 
honor and happiness; a future abounding in good, not only to us 
and to our posterity, but to millions from other lands, who will 
resort to ours in quest of peace, security, and personal and political 
independence which are denied them in tlie places of their nativity. 
Why should it not be so? We have had many trials as a people; 
through sufiering and tribulation we were born as a nation ; we en- 
dured much before that birth was fully consummated by the Constitu- 
tion ; and after that event, we had occasional afflictions up to the time 
of what is well denominated " The Great Rebellion." In passing 
through this triumphantly, we shall indeed have passed through 
the "fiery furnace ;" but as I humbly trust and firndy believe only 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 69 

to be "purified;" to ])e made more sensible of our blessings ; to be 
the better qualified to appreciate and enjoy them. We shall come 
out of the trial with a deej) and enduring feeling of gratitude to the 
Great Disposer of events for his mercies to us, and with a heartfelt 
and earnest realization of the truth that "Whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteueth," and that though "no chastening for the present seemeth 
to be joyous but grievous, nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them, which are exercised 
therebyJ^ I say this in all reverence, for I acknowledge an over- 
ruling Providence alike in the affairs of nations and of individ- 
ual man. He has subjected us in all parts of our country to 
this great tribulation for our good. The States in rebellion have 
suflTered all the evils of war in their midst, desolation, destitution of 
the comforts and often of the necessaries of life, impoverishment, 
the laying waste frequently of town and country, public and private 
bankruptcy, hundreds of thousands of lives sacrificed or rendered 
useless by wounds or disease. In the States not in rebellion, innu- 
merable firesides rendered desolate by the victims offered up in the 
contest, not a town or neighborhood that has not lost some or many 
loved ones ; patriot heroes of all ages yielded up to death in the 
battle-field or in the hospital ; a national debt of extraordinary 
magnitude devolved upon the nation. Though they have not within 
their own borders, except to a very limited extent, had the frightful 
experience of actual war; and though, as I have before remarked, a 
stranger in passing through our States would scarcely be aware 
that war existed ; and though our material prosperity, public and 
individual, has not been sensibly affected, yet millions of individ- 
uals among us have been called on to weep in bitter, inconsolable 
anguish. Thus, everywhere through the land, has the hand of 
afi&iction been laid heavily on the people. Thus, as individuals 
and as communities, both sections of our land have had enough to 
awaken them to solemn and sober reflection, and to expose to their 
view their errors and sins as a nation and as men and to lead them 
to better purposes for the future. In vain will have been those 
severe chastisements, unless those results follow. 

Under the subduing and softening influence of this awfully im- 
pressive lesson, the patriot and the Christian may well hope, that 
the American people will, for a long time to come, study to avoid 
the errors of the past; to seek higher, purer aims; to cultivate the 
feelings of kindly brotherhood, and to diffuse everywhere among 
us the spirit of a true Christian civilization. 



70 THE DESTINY OP OUR COUNTRY. 

I believe that the lesson will not be lost upon us, and that we 
shall emerge from this contest a better and a purer, a more patriotic 
and a more unselfish people; more deeply sensible of the value of 
our institutions ; more grateful to God for the blessings he has in 
them vouchsafed to us. 

Thus, I see at no distant period the extinction of the rebellion and 
the restoration of every State to its wonted place in our happy 
Union ; and then lies before us a more brilliant prospect than has 
yet been placed before any people. It may be termed the beginning 
of a new career. We start upon it with the respect and admiration 
of the world for the wonderful works we have done ; the power — 
physical, moral and financial — we have displayed; the sublime ex- 
hibitions of individual heroism and courage which have been so 
profusely abundant both at the South and the North; the manifes- 
tation of a high civilization in so many deeds of charity, benevo- 
lence and philanthropy. Every nation will award to us the proud 
and coveted title of a hrave people. We start upon this career, 
too, with deeper devotion to our country and more exalted con- 
ceptions of its destiny and its mission. We enter upon it with the 
perfect conviction that, whatever may have been the fact hereto- 
fore, the events of the last three years will have conclusively dem- 
onstrated that we are for ever safe, b}'- means of our military 
genius and power, if for no other reason, from foreign intrusion or 
attack, and consequently that we can pursue undisturbed tlie arts 
of peace and cherish all that can elevate us as men and as a nation. 
Our population and territorial extent, our national resources and 
rapid and certain increase, our Constitution, that work of surpassing 
wisdom, entirely adequate as it is to the safe and happy govern- 
ment, in a national sense, of the millions that will occupy our terri- 
tory; our State Governments so beautifully adapted to the purposes 
for which they were designed, and between which and the General 
Government there never can be any discordance except such as 
may arise from the unhallowed ambition of wicked men ; all these 
entitle us to look forward to a future alike illustrious and benefi- 
cent. 

The terrible lesson taught by the rebellion, originating as it did 
from the unhallowed ambition just mentioned, will, let us trustfully 
hope, secure us for centuries to come against a recurrence of the 
calamity. 

In reference to the other peoples of the world, " we are set as a 



THE DESTINY OF OUR COUNTRY. 71 

beacon on a liill." To such as now enjoy the blessings of civiliza- 
tion and Christianity we merely offer our political system as an 
example worthy of imitation ; but we interfere with none and are 
in no sense propagandists. 

As to those yet in the darkness of heathenism and without our 
civilization, our mission is, by humane and peaceful means, to carry 
to them a knowledge of the truth in its highest sense and thus 
ultimately to lead them out of the dark paths, in which they are 
groping, into the bright ways of knowledge, liberty and Chris- 
tianity. 

Without vain boasting or any assumption of superiority, we have 
a right to feel and to say that " our lines are cast in pleasant 
places ;" that the Great Lord of all has given ns a " goodly heri- 
tage," and we may humbly and gratefully believe that it will not 
be taken from us, except through our own wickedness, waywardness 
or folly. 



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